Take Two Round Two

by Third Fang

What do you get when you cross several interdimensional god like beings, raw boredom, a world of Naruto that went wrong, several years worth of off screen training, common sense, insanity, humor, sarcasm, the Log, explosions, plot, and overall chaos? Apparently a lot of headache medicine for Tsunade. May the Games Begin. Sequel to Yet Again With A Little Extra Help.

33. Chapter 32

Chapter Thirty Two: Madness has many faces. Welcome to the Masquerade of One.

I don't own Naruto, any of its characters, or any references in this story. If I did, horrible things would happen. Neither do I own any other anime that I reference. I do own all OC's and new Jutsu in the story as well as every ounce of pure awesome spawned by this.

o. o. o.

Naruto landed with enough rage and wrath to momentarily give him the impression of an Old Testament God. The earth around him shattered like glass, and all the air in the vicinity trembled, echoing his anger.

One hand lashed out and snatched the madman by the throat. The other ripped the pole embedded in Hidan's chest while simultaneously knocking away the scythe that tried to tear him apart.

With a massive heave, Hidan was blasted out of the circle several times faster than the sound barrier. The seal under his feet glowed crimson red, and a second triangle outside of the circle became visible.

Agony. Rapture. Screaming. Shearing. Shaving. His body twitched and spasmed under the malicious and twisted effects of the seal, assaulting Naruto's mind, body and soul, dead set on destroying them.

The Sky could not be controlled by a single point.

Naruto instantly dropped to the ground and slammed his free hand to the earth. "Uzumaki Style. Nine Point Seal Breaker."

Nine tail like lines of scriptures spiraled out of his hand like a whirlpool and latched onto the edges of the seal around him.

Three. Three. And Three. Yet Five and Four. A slew of weaknesses assaulted as one.

"Kai!"

Despite being written in blood and channeling literal godly power, the seal shattered under the pressure of his counterseal.

He wasn't on the level of a Seal Master like his parents, but he had made sure to learn how to break the fuckers when needed.

"Ngh…" A bead of sweat dripped down his face as he finally allowed himself to react to the psychological assault he had been subject to.

Yet it didn't numb him to the sensation of a massive accumulation of chakra a short distance away. The top half of a massive white rabbit like monstrosity forming a giant black ball of power over its head.

"I… don't have time for this bullshit." He forced himself back to his feet, his eyes starting to become bloodshot as the chakra rod in his hands shattered in his grip, obliterated by the wind around it, and the dust scattered into the distance. He had kept the thing as a precaution in case negotiations with Nagato went south, but he didn't expect it to be used as part of Hidan's ritual. It was a titanic mistake that he was going to berate himself for decades at bare minimum.

He was too stunned from the seal to move as quickly and smoothly as he needed, so he couldn't run from it. He didn't have enough chakra to directly counter something that powerful head on.

So, that left the indirect approach.

He widened his stance and bent his knees as if to receive a heavy blow, but then reached up with both hands and grabbed at the very air as if it was a solid material… in fact, if one looked at his fingers, they'd be able to see bends and folds around them as if he was gripping on an invisible cloth.

o. o. o.

Dima blinked, clearly interested in the display. "Shit. He taught himself Eddy's move too?"

"YES! YES! YES! YES! FUCK! YES!" Shadow cheered, pumping her fist up with each word with absolute approval.

"What can I say?" Ghost shrugged, ignoring the confused looks he was getting from those not in the loop. "Minion's got taste. Whenever he saw a move he liked and thought he could actually pull off, he went for it. Can't do all of them on the fly, or efficiently, but he knows how to use them at least."

"Ghost? Shouldn't you be worried more on what just happened? Like how Hidan just apparently killed someone important enough that Naruto has gone back to being so pissed that we can literally feel it through the screen?" Hana asked worriedly.

"Hm? Oh? That? Yeah. Sure. Death is bad and stuff. But we are over here, and they are over there. Can't do anything about it. It'd be better to worry about what happens after all that."

"That isn't much better." Anko frowned.

"Nope. But it's something you can do that'll help things suck less later, won't it?"

"You're, such an asshole sometimes, you know that?"

"Doesn't make me wrong. Now hush. Minion's gonna wow everyone again."

Waltz pouted, ignored by everyone. Why was it that everyone kept on forgetting that he could literally bend reality with his bare fingers too? No no. Screw bending reality, he's made a habit of poking literal holes in reality with said fingers for over a millennia, but nobody's ever impressed with that when he shows them.

Still… that didn't mean that what Naruto was doing was easy. Quite the opposite actually. So much so that, considering all the massive techniques he's been using lately, it wouldn't be surprising if he was rapidly reaching his limit soon.

Which begs the question, why was Naruto rushing things so much?

o. o. o.

Madness bends. Chaos turns. The Lord of Heaven smiles, remembering the Ancient White Whale that shook the world.

Kaguya fired her Bijudama straight at Naruto, tearing up the landscape just from the recoil.

"Sky Art. Whitebeard."

With a massive heave, Naruto warped the world around him.

Like an ever widening spiral, the space in front of him rotated, turning the earth into heaven back and forth. A massive twisted and coiling canyon surrounded and roofed by mountains arcing over its expanse spun into reality in the flat crater; it reached and clawed forward in the direction of Kaguya, and the titanic blast of energy coming its way.

The beam of power was too strong to confront head on. It would travel straight and unimpeded regardless of what Naruto threw in its way, obliterating anything that got too close. That fact had not changed.

However, the beam's straight path was now a twisted and warped mess. A rampaging spiraling amalgamation of space that did not destroy, but bend whatever was in its path. Straight was no longer straight, but a maelstrom that would be followed regardless.

And so, the blast traveled straight. Straight up, and around and through the vortex that it had encountered. Spinning along the same path as the twisted canyon, tearing apart the newly formed landscape…

… And arcing harmlessly over Naruto, bombing Kakuya's bottom half, which had spawned an endless number of chubby boneless arms that had attempted to overwhelm the boy from behind.

On the other side of the madness, the contortion of reality reamed its way forward, engulfing the top half of the white rabbit, mangling the roaring beast relentlessly as it did with the landscape. The ivory body bent and spun as if it had no bones as it was carried off by the attack, writhing like a piece of clothing inside a washing machine. Finally, it was slammed back into the earth without mercy.

"Hah. Hah." Chakra was just one part of the equation. Stamina was another. But they weren't the only things that could get worn thin.

Manipulating the sky itself was mentally exhausting, but physically bending reality itself via brute force on a massive scale was literally soul crushing. If he didn't get some time to recover soon, there was a real chance that his grip on the world around him would loosen enough for Kaguya to teleport. He can't keep up this constant rapid firing of massive reality altering moves like this.

But, there were more important things to worry about.

Snake. Dragon. Cross.

"Level Two. Shadow Clone."

o. o. o.

Poof.

"For the love of what remaining sanity I have, please tell me he's still alive."

"Blugh!" Nagato coughed up a blob of blood and internal organs on Konan's face.

"Oh good. He's still with us." The clone moved quickly to the patient.

"What the hell happened?!" Konan shouted angrily, her hands covered in blood and glowing chakra, indicating that she was trying to keep Nagato with them. "Where were you?!"

"Blowing up the ass end of a giant rabbit." Naruto muttered, putting a hand both on Konan and Nagato's shoulders. "Hidan pulled a fast one with his ritual. I canceled it out, but the damage is still done. I'll keep him alive as long as I can. You heal him."

"What are yoooooooou?!" Konan's spine went ramrod straight as the clone's chakra flooded her system.

"Itachi. What happened to my other? Things have been too hectic for my memories to sort themselves." The clone ignored her and looked at Itachi, who was watching things unfold.

"It dissipated during the fighting soon after it picked up again. The damage it took from Hidan's abilities were too much in its condition." He elaborated.

"You know about the rabbit lady?"

"We read your lips during the exchange. We all have… thoughts, on the matter that will need to be discussed." They had watched everything unfold through the eyes of one of Itachi's summoned crows, which was in turn displayed on the same mist-screen genjutsu that Pain had used when Akatsuki had announced their arrival in Iwa.

Said crow would have been obliterated a hundred times by now if Naruto didn't give it the metaphysical ok to fly in his territory when the fighting started, granting it immunity from his atmospheric manipulations. They didn't know everything. But they knew enough to know that the world turned on its head now.

"Cough."

"I don't think now is a good time Nagato." The clone chastised the bleeding man, who was struggling to breathe. "Oi, Itachi. Use one of your Genjutsu to force his mind to stay alive. I can keep his body running for a while so long as Konan does something about the wound."

Itachi blinked. "Using Genjutsu to force the patient to stay mentally alive and stabilize his vitals… Clever."

"Piss off enough genjutsu and medic specialists and you'd be surprised what they're willing to say and or maybe do to you to make you behave." He made a mental note a long time ago that leaving Tsunade, Sakura, and Sasuke in the same room alone with one another was something that he can and should lose sleep over.

"Noted." Itachi moved between the two shinobi, lifted Nagato's even more pale and haggard face up, and looked directly into the man's ringed eyes. A single jolt indicated that his Sharingan based illusion had taken hold. "I've done what I can, but it will not last long in his current state, and anything stronger than what I have used will only weaken his disposition."

Still, with Naruto keeping Nagato's body alive and Itachi supporting his mind, there was a genuine shot that they could manage to save Nagato at this rate. Hearts were important to keep a person alive - Sasori and Kakuzu came to mind - but only because they kept the blood flowing. At the end of the day, the organ that ultimately determined a person's life was the brain. So long as they could keep that going…

"I'm experienced in field medic ninjutsu. Not surgical. I'm not Tsunade. I can't regenerate hearts." The Paper woman growled, trying her hardest not to lose the only true friend she had left.

"Lady, your organization has two heart thieves, a genuine immortal, a plant man with questionable physiology, fucking Orochimaru of all people for who knows how long, and a guy with god's eyes that interacted with the rest of the world via zombies. Don't you DARE tell me that you don't have a spare set of organs, or bodies with functional organs, OR some bullshit forbidden resurrection slash healing technique on hand for emergencies. I refuse to believe that you are that careless at critical moments like these. You are the Leader of Akatsuki's right hand. You are supposed to have shit like that perpetually on you."

Itachi didn't say anything, but once more he had to silently concede that Naruto did have a valid point when he put things like that.

Konan grit her teeth, trying hard not to rebut the blonde's argument. "… What I do have, can't be used on Nagato. His body's too weak to handle the strain. It'll kill him regardless."

"Use it. I'll make him live through it." The clone frowned, not accepting that argument.

"But…"

"For fucks sake, I literally bleed physical chakra! I'm barely synonymous with a midget Biju! Either we juice the man or he's dead regardless!"

"Fine!" Konan snapped. Following some mental command, several layers of the skin on her face turned into paper and began to shift around until several seals filtered out. "These are Uzumaki regeneration seals. I use them to passively on myself, but they work better with more chakra running through them. We can use them on Nagato."

It makes sense. Naruto did notice that she was in better condition than at the end of their fight. If the seals could handle his modified chakra, they should be able to multitask everything.

She didn't waste anymore time channeling her chakra and starting the regeneration process, evident by the seals starting to glow blue.

All he had to do was top off Konan's reserves while synchronizing himself with Nagato's chakra and life system, support it at a steady rate, and… wait.

It had started working at first, the skin and muscles around Nagato's wound had begun to close visually, but then it all suddenly stopped. Tiny sparks of blue and black began to crack around the injured organ and flesh.

"Something's wrong."

Konan blinked, too busy working on the seals to see what was happening. "What? What are you talking about?"

"Itachi."

Knowing instantly what the clone was requesting, the Uchiha looked at Nagato's wound with his Sharingan. "… Something's interfering with his body and fighting the healing process and your chakra. It's actively killing him. Even with our efforts."

"I only just noticed it." The clone frowned, pouring more chakra into Nagato, but still getting pushed back by the cursed power. "This feeling. It's not chakra exactly. More like… shit. Shit fuck son of a bitch damn it!"

With two consecutive pops, a clone of the clones instantly materialized and dismissed itself.

"What are you doing?" Itachi asked.

"… Hoping I'm wrong."

o. o. o.

Nagato blinked in confusion as he looked around the blank landscape. "… This is…"

"A pseudopsycho manifestation between several consciousness'. In more comprehensive terms, a realm between realms that do not exist between several mental states."

The Uzumaki bearing Rinnegan eyes turned around warily, only to pause in surprise to see for the first time eyes identical to his own with a face that was not his. "You, are the Sage of Six paths."

"Nagato Uzumaki. There is much to discuss, and unfortunately little time for it."

o. o. o.

"You've got to be, fuck!" Naruto snapped as the clone's memories filtered into his mind. His level two clone had exhausted most of his remaining reserves, but with Heaven's Fall up, his chakra regeneration would get him back to snuff soon enough.

With a quick jump, he leapt to where he had chucked Hidan, and was pleased to see that the bastard had not yet completely regenerated his legs yet.

"Oi!" Naruto wasted no time grabbing the mutilated man's throat and slamming him onto the ground before he could react properly. "That voodoo jutsu of yours isn't just a sympathetic manifestation, is it?"

"Ngh. Nghnhnhn. Whatever do you mean, Lord?" Hidan chuckled with a half caved in wind pipe.

It was mostly caved in a moment later as several kilotons of mass slammed into his body, crushing him to the ground.

Naruto's expression grew more and more apocalyptic. He didn't bother to hide his anger. "Don't fuck with me Acolyte. That technique you used isn't just some jutsu. It was a genuine Sacrificial Rite, wasn't it?"

If he had been worried about being caught red handed, he didn't show it. Instead, Hidan seemed more elated than anything. "Ha. Hahaha. Of course, you'd pick up on that already. Since you are fine, that means that fool with his head in the clouds is in quite the predicament. Eh? Ehehehehehe ugh!?"

The force crushing Hidan doubled, causing him to momentarily stop giggling.

"I, did not give you permission to laugh."

With grit teeth, he made and dismissed a clone.

o. o. o.

"FUCK!"

"What? What happened?" Konan didn't turn to the clone, too busy trying to heal Nagato's chest and fight the curse that was eating away at the man's life.

"How bad?" Itachi asked, already realizing that they were not going to like what the blonde was going to say from his expression.

A Sacrificial Rite. Of all the things that Hidan could have done…

There was a reason why they existed in so many groups that worshipped Gods and outside entities despite sounding useless in a practical sense. Most were simple imitations made by idiots that either didn't know what they were doing, or were following terrible instructions, but genuine rites did exist. They are a thing, and the real ones worked. Once marked and put through the process, the victim's soul, power, and being belonged to the designated patron the ritual was geared for.

And Hidan was literally part God now. The ritual was by the Divine, for the Divine. The effects were, to put it mildly, nearly absolute.

Nagato… even though he wasn't truly a god, he still possessed the Rinnegan and knew the basics of Presence. Sacrificing him to a genuine God, to Jashin, or whatever Hidan worshipped, would not lead to good things.

"Hidan, the jutsu he uses for his rituals got upgraded into a genuine Sacrificial Rite because he's possessed by his God. Nagato's been marked by a curse. Because of the nature of the God, we might have been able to do something if this was under normal circumstances, but…"

The wound in question was Nagato's heart. The literal and metaphorical biological symbol for life itself. Random facts like that mattered when it came to Gods. It wasn't an issue of replacing Nagato's heart now. His very life force and possibly his soul was stained and at risk. Only an overwhelmingly potent and powerful cleansing force would be able to deal with this.

Naruto learned a lot in his travels, Getting rid of high quality curses that have already set themselves in was not one of them. He knew enough to get by, but ones supported by Gods were beyond his ability.

Only someone, or something, of sufficient world and reality altering authority could counteract or circumvent Nagato's state now. And if Nagato succumbed to the curse, all of his potential and authority would go to Jashin, and Hidan.

Nagato… couldn't be saved.

"What?" Konan turned to him angrily. "I thought that this sort of madness was supposed to be your field of expertise!"

"Just because I know a bit the subject doesn't mean I can do anything! The first rule of dealing with genuine Gods is fucking DON'T! The second is don't fool yourself into believing that you will ever know all the rules!" The clone snapped before calming down. "The curse is backed by a literal God's influence. Even in its watered down state, it's more potent than Nagato's power. More potent than mine. More potent than the Biju's. Even if I had the time to make a seal to stall things, and we don't, the damn seal would get in the way of trying to deal with that heart problem we are also trying to fix."

"What about the chain link?"

There was a brief pause, Naruto and Konan turned to Itachi, who held up the chain link that had been intended for Nagato and Konan for years.

"You said that the one responsible for these things was someone on par with the Gods. If he made these, and they are capable of bringing back our memories from a timeline that has literally been destroyed, then maybe they are capable of handling Nagato's curse as well."

The clone blinked several times owlishly. "… It's about time one of you Uchiha geniuses finally lived up to the hype. Give it."

With a snap of two wrists, the ebony ring of unknown material exchanged owners. The clone laid it out on his palm and held it up to his eyes.

"What are you doing?" Konan asked.

"Making sure this will work and not blow up his head by accident." He focused on the ring. "Ghost. You know what I'm going to ask."

A faint transparent smoke leaked up from the tool, bending space above it and formed a miniature version of the man in question. "Yo. Kinda surprised it took so long to remember that these things could be used for other purposes."

"We're on a clock. Can the ring be used to help Nagato or not?"

The mini immortal turned to the Rinnegan user and gave him a once over. "Owch. Invoked imperfection sympathy and invocated pain magnification right on the heart. Normally you'd have to pay or piss off someone important to get hit with something that nasty."

"Bottom line."

The man scratched his head. "Sorry kid, I can't break the curse with just the ring."

"I thought you were supposed to be some kind of God." Itachi prodded before anyone could voice their displeasure.

"Oi oi, cut me some slack. There are limitations. Rules to be followed. The links don't have a lot of raw power in them. They're mostly conceptual manifestations that let me make a small twist in reality metaphorically by ninety degrees if they aren't used for your memories. At best. Normally that alone is enough to handle anything of similar nature made in this world, but the guy that made that thing is of a higher tier of quality and power. Yes, power usually doesn't play that big of a role in these sorts of things, but there are still requirements that still need to be met. Things get messy whenever you God Vs. God anything. Throw in the scrambled heart, and I'm more likely to send his chest cavity into another dimension than heal him if I gave it a shot with what I have."

"Son of a…" The clone grit his teeth, running through what little he knew of Ghost's powers, calming himself down in the process. "No. I expected something like this. Loopholes. We need a loophole… what about reviving him after he dies?"

"What?" Konan glared at the clone angrily.

"It's a Sacrificial Rite. The moment he dies, your man's essence is sent to that prick's patron. It's literally the divine equivalent of calling first dibs with their hand two inches over the target. Even I can't do anything about that unless I seriously move my weight around, which is something you know full well I'm not going to do unless that ass makes the first move." Ghost frowned, clearly not budging on the topic.

"What do you call this?" Konan was clearly losing her patience.

"Against me. First move against me." The immortal rolled his blind eyes. "Lady, existential divine politics is a complete bitch. Believe it or not, this rock you are on isn't the center of conception or reality. I can't just flaunt my powers and smack whoever I want with my reality obliterating dick whenever I feel like it. Believe it or not, picking fights with any God that remotely inconveniences me gets real old surprisingly fast. Even I have to follow some restrictions on what I can and can't do, or else shit gets real and spills over everywhere."

"I-" Itachi started to talk, but was cut off again.

"Including here." Ghost stressed his point, some irritation leaking into his tone. "And unless you lot can manage correcting perpetual singularities that can, and I'm not exaggerating, swallow up entire solar systems by the millisecond, I suggest you stop asking for things that are beyond your ability to pay off."

"And yet you claimed you rewrote reality when you first came here." Itachi argued.

"I burned it and causality. There's a difference. And for the record, back THEN there wasn't a multiversal scale deity here keeping tabs on things. Kicking around the local rednecks in charge is fine, especially when things are about to go pear shaped regardless because I'M DOING THEIR FUCKING JOBS FOR THEM!" Ghost shouted to what appeared to be the ceiling. "But it's a completely different story when dealing with guys higher up on the totem pole. If I were to use an analogy, if this world were a rural village, I was bullying the local government when I got here. No one important was here at the time. But that asshole priest of yours is now the rough equivalent of a… borderline chunin of a Hidden village that's related to the Kage. He's still nothing to me, but if I push my luck that asshole will come knocking next."

"And what are you in this analogy?" Konan grit her teeth.

"God." Ghost stated bluntly, only to get flicked on the head by Naruto with a finger. "Fine. Hypothetically, I'm akin to that Kaguya chick in this metaphor. The main me can total the God easily, but that doesn't change the fact that I actually don't want to start an unnecessary fight and draw problems to myself if I can help it. Shocking that I actually am trying to be responsible about something, I know."

"So that's it? We are just going to let Nagato die? And supposedly have his soul eaten by some bodiless monster?" Konan looked like she was barely holding on to what rationality she had left, unsure if she should be panicked, furious, horrified, or hysterical at just how absurd of a situation she was in right now.

Ghost shifted the weight on his legs. "I can't do anything about his life the way it is now. But we might be able to do something about his soul. It would not be good for anyone if someone as significant as Nagato landed in that guy's hands. Like I said, the Rite is a divine way of calling dibs, meaning to gain resources to expand and grow in either influence or power. Thing is, it's not final until your guy finally kicks it. Until then, we do have time to be able to… redirect things."

"You want to claim his soul then?" Itachi frowned.

"What?!" Konan snapped.

"Whoa. Hold on. Don't get the wrong idea. I don't want jack. Souls are next to useless for me and mine. Don't want 'em. Don't need 'em. Doesn't change the fact that we can still claim them though. More of a precautionary skill than anything." Ghost held up his hands in surrender. "Scab uses a few here and there for experiments, but those came from guys that really tweaked him off, and Crypt… yeah he wouldn't be interested in Nagato's soul in the first place. Never mind, I'm just saying that an option we have is me snagging Nagato's soul in a less edgy rite so Jashin's doesn't finish."

"And then what? Let his soul go?" Itachi asked warily.

"Ah. Eventually." The immortal sheepishly admitted. "Rites are, finicky at times. I can't just let donations go. There's a whole process to go through. Me especially since my domain is… let's just say it's not that simple. I can and would let him cross over eventually, but it would take some time. There'll be some ordeals he'll have to go through, but nothing extreme like you went through minion."

"I knew it! I fucking knew you were going overboard on me you asshole!" The clone snapped.

"And yet you are still the one most responsible for your worst disasters and traumas. Not me. Imagine that." Ghost sarcastically muttered, knowing that few people ever gave him the benefit of the doubt anymore when it came to mishaps, even for the important things. The fact annoyed him more than anything now.

"Wait. Why can't you just revive Nagato after you get his soul?" Konan asked, desperately holding back the curse while keeping her partner alive.

"Because the second he becomes my property, a whole slew rules come into play. That's on top of many off screen reasons that you don't have time to go over. Bottom line I don't bring back the dead unless certain criteria are met that I set up a long time ago. Don't complain. I'm giving you an out for your friend. Take it or leave it."

Naruto grit his teeth, trying to argue with Ghost. He had long since realized that arguing with the man about certain subjects would get him nowhere. The Rules were one of them. "Do we have any other options? What else can you do that might help?"

"Not much." Ghost admitted. "Again, your guy has been linked to a fragment of a genuine heavy hitter. That doesn't give me many options if any in this state. I mean, I'm a fragment like this as well, but our respective realms are in completely unrelated areas, so nothing would cancel out in the end if we went head to head. Like trying to fight a closing door with the color purple. Plus the other guy's got a stronger metaphorical grip on Nagato right now. I can't forcefully get rid of it without seriously damaging everything Nagato is in the process."

"What… what about stalling it?" Naruto grasped at straws. "You're one of the three Absolute Truths. Even a fragment of you should be able to put a hold on death. This sort of thing is in your territory."

"Absolute Truth?" Itachi frowned in confusion.

A small twitch in Ghost's face made it clear that he wasn't comfortable talking about the topic. "… That might have been the case kid, except for two things. One, even if I did stall the process, Nagato would still be subject to Hidan's powers. The damage would still accumulate and stick. He'd be alive, but torn apart through the fight until it would be impossible to heal him afterwards. The other problem is, well, I can't stall something that's already here."

Naruto paled before turning to Nagato. "Shit, you don't mean…"

"He might have had a chance if he was in better shape, but the only thing your literally skin and bones friend had going for him in that state was his huge chakra reserves and those eyes. Once the foundation of that stability was hit hard enough, everything started collapsing like a house of cards. It sucks, but the only person responsible for this particular setup is the victim himself for not addressing it at all. Nothing we can do about it now." Ghost sighed with a helpless shrug. "Even Tsunade would be pushed to keep him running for a year even if she was here and the curse was gone. If I try to stall anything with what limited authority I have, he'd be in a perpetual twisted not alive not dead state until I revoke it. Trust me, death is better than that."

"Son of a, Damn IT!" Naruto swore angrily. "What the fuck!? After all that bullshit to get Nagato back it ends like this?!"

"Why is Nagato so important to your plans?!" Konan snapped at Naruto. "Is it his Rinnegan? Is it his power? Shouldn't you be relieved that he isn't an obstacle anymore?!"

"Nagato could have cemented peace!" Naruto snapped, shutting her up. "As a start, he could have wiped out Tobi and Zetsu at the right time when their guards were down since apparently they are the source of pretty much everything that's gone wrong for the past twenty years! That would free up literally everyone so that we could be on the fast track for setting things up for actual peace with a significantly smaller risk of it going all to hell!"

The clone probably would have said more, except the ring that it held in its hand bolted up and nailed it straight in the face.

"And that's where I cut him off before he starts to rant again." Ghost sighed, floating the ring in mid-air. "Sorry about that, but Nagato would be dead before this guy stopped screaming. Clones tend to be a bit more unstable than their originals and all that. Bottom line? Nagato could have one shotted the guys that were causing problems for everyone, then helped set the bedrock for actual international stability by being the voice of the smaller nations while the minion handled the larger ones. Which leads to one thing, which leads to another, hopefully stuff that he's gone over with you already, yadda yadda yadda, and boom, you have a semi-stable planetary peace accord set up that on average will last for at least a couple of millennia barring the occasional expected fuckup."

"And you would know this because you've been there?" Itachi asked skeptically.

"Sort of. My physical age doesn't match my experienced age, doesn't match my mental age, doesn't match my accumulated age, and doesn't match my spatial age… it's a metaphysical thing. Bottom line is that the kid has seen models that have worked for a long time and was trying to apply that shit here." The ring floated to Nagato.

"Wait! We haven't agreed to do anything yet." Konan tried to stop him.

"Relax. I'm gonna talk to the patient and get his OK for this, just so you lot feel less guilty about carrying through with killing him. Plus, having a willing "participant" makes the claiming process smoother with less potential complications. You guys are the ones that are eventually going to kill him "in my name", not me. Ugh. Not that it makes me feel any better. I hate working with souls…"

Without further explanation, the floating chain link pressed up against Nagato's forehead.

o. o. o.

"Ok Nagato. I know that you heard pretty much everything on the outside, so let's just cut to the…" Ghost clapped his hands together, ready to get this over with, only to pause as he realized that inside Nagato's mindscape was not just the man in question, but a familiar old man that also had ringed eyes as well. "… oh. You again."

"Indeed." Hagoromo's expression was just as flat.

"I take it you two have met." Nagato observed their reactions with some curiosity. It was clear that the two did not see one another rather favorably.

"We have had discussions." The Sage stated.

Ghost held back a groan. This might take slightly longer than he had anticipated.

o. o. o.

No news was good news.

At least, that was what Naruto was telling himself as he pinned down Hidan with Atlas.

"Kurama. How much longer?"

"Almost done."

"Heheheh." Hidan laughed despite having a crushed ribcage. His legs had regenerated, but that didn't help him get out of his current predicament. "You seem distracted. Lord. What's wrong? Can't figure out how to kill me? Not even with all that power and authority you have? Can't you avenge the Artist, the Proud Beast, and the one clueless imitator?"

Naruto's slit eyes bore down on the man. "I'm angry as hell. I'm not stupid, Empathy. I know of the Claim. Of the Curse. I can't kill you."

The Abandoned Reaper grinned as it was held down by the Heavens, Flaunting the crimson shackles made by the Contract around its neck.

Hidan seemed more elated than put out by the revelation. "Kakahaha. So you knew after all! That this one's end belongs to the Beast that Strikes Once. I was worried when you tried so hard earlier to obliterate me before, but it appears that it was for naught." His grin widened. "So you know then. That this fight is futile. You cannot kill me Lord. You cannot hold me here forever. No wound will stay. No seal of this world is strong enough to last longer than a moon. Had you access to more of your power I would be concerned, but as you are now, I can only be delayed."

"…" Naruto didn't say anything, his face bowed forward, hair shadowing his eyes.

"Nothing to say? Don't disappoint me, Lord, or are you trying to figure out some way to stall me?" Hidan smirked. "Maybe you are going to try and convince the Thief in her absurd state that I am the bigger threat? Or perhaps you have some jutsu in mind that will put me in stasis? Maybe it's even way up… in…"

Hidan trailed off as his eyes turned away from Naruto and looked past the boy, into the sky itself, where Kurama had vanished to earlier.

Even as he did so, he didn't miss the cruel and bitter smirk that made its way onto Naruto's face.

"Good guess."

"Kurama, the gig's up. Hidan knows what we're doing. Double time."

"Lovely."

"T-That's…" Hidan's eyes grew wider as he looked past the clouds and saw what Naruto had been preparing since the three way fight had began.

"You know, I was wondering if either of you would notice before it was finished. It did take longer to complete due to several last second changes, but even so, very sloppy of you." Naruto hummed with a soft sadistic pleasure that was not unlike a certain Snake Sanin. "I mean, didn't you think it was odd? I am the Lord of the Chaotic Heavens. Other than a few twisters, there's been little activity from Heaven itself, hasn't there?"

"Y-You can't. The Claim. The Curse of Contract. I am not Yours!" The madman genuinely began to grow worried, putting effort into escaping his current predicament.

"No. You are not. I've known that since the night you killed Gai." Naruto's glare was cold. "I know how the Claim works, Empathy. I know its limitations and its functions. I cannot kill you, but I can put you away for a good long while. Long enough for Lee and his group to learn what they need to know in order to put you down for good."

Three gates. Four gates. Chakra and pure agony flowed though Hidan's body like wildfire, but even so all he could do is barely lift his limbs from the ground. He needed more. "H-How? That much power? You don't have nearly enough to make that monstrosity alone, and the entire country would have detected it if you had prepared it beforehand! When could you have managed to even start…?!"

No. There was one time where the kid had enough power to spare making that monstrosity in spades without anyone noticing.

"… The ten seconds?"

Right at the beginning when Naruto showed off all his power. No, the boy hadn't showed off. He had been setting up and masking his final move since then without anyone else the wiser.

Naruto's grin widened. "I have to thank you for that. I was thinking of how to ask Ghost to lift my restrictions to "show off" without raising his suspicion, only for you to do the job for me. You have my thanks."

Five Gates. Six Gates. Hidan's trembling frame had enough to stand up now, but it was better to save his strength and move in a single go. He wasn't using the technique properly, and parts of his insides screamed as they tore themselves asunder with thrashing power, but he didn't even notice. As it was, he wouldn't be able to defend himself if he tried to escape this moment. He had to keep the brat talking.

"That doesn't make sense you little bastard! You were there with us the entire time. We would have noticed you starting to make something that elaborate!"

Indeed. In those ten seconds, the boy had made it a point that he didn't move at all during his display. Not when Hidan attacked his connection to the earth. Not when the boy had… made…

"… The clones."

For the first time since Kaguya had appeared, Hidan had remembered about Naruto's clones. The strong clones that held absurd levels of chakra. They had not appeared once since the ménage a trois had started. Hidan had assumed that they had just dispelled or something from the recoil of the fighting and his powers, but… what if that wasn't the case?

"Yup. Me, myself and I." Naruto's eyes glowed with malevolent authority. "And me."

SHINK.

A blade of wind chakra spiked up from the ground and speared through Hidan's chest.

"Hurk?!" There had been a clone underground?! Since when?! He should have been able to detect something like this and…

Crunch.

His body was flattened as the mass on his body doubled.

No. So that was it. The constant oppressive force from the Titan's Curse was clouding his senses, numbing him to any additional threats that he might have otherwise picked up.

This was bad. This was very bad. He had to use the Gates and escape before-

"And me."

Another blade flashed through the dirt, unimpeded by the devastating gravity to sever the man's legs off above the knees like a reverse guillotine. The cleaver-like edge stayed in place, preventing the limbs from reattaching themselves.

"And me." His right arm was speared at the elbow.

"And the rest of us."

An entire forest of transparent blades splintered up, shredding apart Hidan's body as if it was made of paper, splashing blood and chunks of meat in countless directions, only to grind them further into chopped sinew and slop from the enhanced gravity.

"Wind Style. Forest of Pale Grass."

Naruto's expression didn't flicker in the slightest. Not for the gruesome image that he had just made. Nor for the fact that the feelings that Hidan had experienced had just momentarily reflected back into his body a couple dozen times.

Getting skewered all over was a marvelous way of snapping one out of a near blind rage. Had a spicy kick to it that was hard to match.

"Aah. Scary. Scary. That was a scary amount of chakra you were building up. The Eight Gates, right? I'm surprised you could unlock so many of them. Even if you are an Acolyte, mastering such intricate biological functions is a pretty complicated and difficult thing to do. Definitely not something an idiot can learn properly. I wonder how many times a normal human would have killed themselves over if they used it the way you did? Still, it's no big deal. I learned something pretty interesting a while back when it comes to self enhancement and power boosting techniques."

Naruto looked lazily to where Hidan's legs were, separated from what was the bulk of the main body. Then to where his left arm was strewn. And his right hand.

His mind flashed to another time. Another world. A twisted world with twisted people and twisted powers. He had gotten overconfident in a sparring match, and the results were… painful.

"Moves like that are useful things. High level healing that counteracts any repercussions from them are even better. But, they aren't much use if you can't do anything about your limbs being cut off from your body. Not unless-"

Naruto swung his hand back, tearing apart what appeared to be a tentacle comprised of nothing more than twisted muscle fibers and tipped with a mangled human nail. All the parts writhing as if they were pieces of a worm as they fell to the ground.

"You also have free forming mutation abilities as well." Naruto deadpanned, not at all surprised by the sudden turn of events. "Contextually, it makes no fucking sense for you to have it, but the power fits your personality fantastically well. No. Wait. You could be imply nervous synapse reactions through the detached limbs via sympathetic imposition onto pre-existing biological systems. Congratulations. You surpassed my expectations, freak."

"Haaaa." Hidan's mutilated chest pushed down, enabling him to hiss out a sound of pain and anger. "Haaaaaaa! HAAAAAAAA!"

Naruto looked around, watching as all the bits and pieces of the man began to glow with corrupted power. Knowing better than to stand in the middle of the mess, he took a few lazy leaps back so he was at a safe distance. "And now this is happening. Limited control over severed body parts…"

He lifted a hand and made a few gestures. Several of the body parts were shredded to pieces, while others were blasted a fair distance from Hidan. Only the largest parts continued to radiate with power, with the rest calmed down, merely emanating a corrupted aura.

"Looks like there's limitations on what he can control based on size and distance." Naruto looked at the camera. "I hope you guys are taking notes."

He ignored the faint responses he felt across the elemental nations to watch Hidan recover in spectacularly gruesome fashion, becoming a hybrid human meat blob while bits and pieces of him etched another seal of blood around him. No doubt Naruto would have been in trouble if he had been within its confines, but as it was…

And like that, Atlas was broken.

"… Hm." Naruto frowned in thought as the man's chakra spiked, focusing more on the seal than his opponent. It always did strike him as odd that an idiot like Hidan knew sealwork in general, one of the most complex of shinobi arts. Come to think of it, that topic and the history of the cult in general did lead him to a curious hypothesis a while back…

"You. Rotten bastard." Hidan got to his feet, radiating with power and panting heavily. "That was the Titan's Curse."

"Please. We both know that what I did was but an imitation of the original. You would not have been able to escape if it was anywhere close to it." Naruto didn't deny it. "Mind if I ask you a question about your religion. Or rather, the religion started here? A petty curiosity."

"You think I'm just going to let you stall me?!" He got ready to move.

"… Your founder was an Uzumaki, wasn't it? Or at least, the first person in the current religion to make contact with Jashin was one. Then that person standardized a lesser form of the sealing method that could be used by other nuts like you."

o. o. o.

There was a brief pause, a scant beat of disbelief that echoed around the world.

"What?" More than one person eloquently summarized their thoughts appropriately.

o. o. o.

"Heh. Heheheh." Hidan calmed down, but his grin turned absolutely ecstatic. "Oh yeah. I remember hearing something about that. Never paid much attention to the old bastards when they weren't talking about the faith. The founder was supposedly from some washed up clan that was good with seals. Rumor had it she was even more twisted than I am, or well, was, heheh. Was real obsessed with revenge come to think of it, and they said she had red hair too. The seals gave it away, didn't it?"

Yes, but only partially. After all, the only people in this entire world that he had ever heard of successfully contacting the Gods themselves in any form were the Uzumaki.

The Shiki Fujin was prime evidence of that.

There were many factors that went into making seals that actually had worth. Shape and design were only part of it. Otherwise anyone could make the Jashin symbol and get a result at some point. But to formulate something this intricate, this invasive… dedication was one thing, but it took real talent and knowledge to create something like this.

It made sense in hindsight. If they could make that monstrosity, then if there were survivors of the clan that were capable, it wouldn't be too far to imagine one to take things a step too far.

"That and you're an idiot." Naruto nodded in satisfaction.

"The idiot is the one that let me power up!" At the drop of a hat, Hidan's power spiked once more, opening six gates at once and flashing towards Naruto in a black and red streak, slashing him in two with his scythe.

Both halves faded away like mist in the wind.

"A clone? No. A genjutsu?" Hidan looked up immediately to where Naruto was floating in the middle of the air, arms crossed. He was slightly confused as to how the boy fooled his senses. He was Empathy, after all. He could feel the pain in everyone and everything around him. His opponents were no different.

Truth was that Naruto had just replaced himself with a floating rock and encompassed it with an illusion at the last second. Hidan could sense his opponents by the pain they felt, so hiding via illusions or invisibility was next to pointless. Only quick maneuvers would work now.

But, by looking up, Hidan also caught sight of that monstrosity that was forming above the clouds, seemingly spinning the sky itself just by existing. A bit of maybe unintentional psychological warfare to make the man rush.

That's right. Keep yelling. Keep looking up at the shiny death jutsu in the sky. Keep being distracted. Fight. Scream. Do whatever you want. Just don't remember about Nagato and the fact that the connection is still up until his clone can hopefully do something to break it.

If that means he had to act like a fool and force down his seething rage. Fine. There was time to murder and tear apart the prick later.

"▄▄████!""

"Ah. Looks like the hungry old lady's finally come around." Naruto glanced at the rampaging top half of Kaguya's rabbit form dragging itself towards them with its two front legs.

A loud ruckus from the opposite direction caused Naruto and Hidan to look the other way to see the monster's bottom half mutated into a slew of half formed appendages and mouths that honestly made it an even more terrifying image than the other half.

Approached by two titanic eldritch abominations while fighting a possessed madman by his equally twisted God.

Yeah. No. This is totally like the past three years all over again. Minus the giant robots and magical girls.

Things were going to get messy again. Best to switch things up to keep the asshole confused and on the defensive.

"He did it! It's his fault! Kill him!" Naruto childishly pointed accusingly at Hidan screaming at the top of his lungs, while the accused at the very least had the decency to look equal parts angry and confused.

"What?! You're the one that cut us both in half!"

"You're the one that borderline Pain incarnate! You think being a magic show mishap would normally matter to that thing?! She actually felt what you did to her! Look at her! Base animal instincts is running the show right now! To her, I'm just tough to eat food! You're the prick that actually triggers threat warnings!"

It was a bit like rock paper scissors. Kaguya eats Naruto. Hidan mind fucks Kaguya with literal pure agony. And Naruto can outperform Hidan in nearly every field while resisting the guy's powers. They could all take one another out if they weren't careful, but the advantages and disadvantages were as clear as day. The only real outlier is that Naruto has enough experience and skill to somewhat counteract his weakness to Kaguya.

The argument would have continued had the two giant white monstrosities crashed on top of the two, forcing them to move lest they be crushed or absorbed.

Naruto breathed in deeply, and exhaled slowly.

His chakra was low. Well, low for him. Level two clones were not cheap and he had been running hot all day. He needed at least a few minutes to recover enough to be genuinely confident about his odds again in a straight up fight. So, he needed to stall. He needed to be cheap.

He needed to be annoying. Aka. Play the "A" Game.

Because being annoying means doing something that worked that was hard to deal with or ignore.

Problem was that it was hard to be petty and cost efficient while dealing with monsters this strong.

Dust in the face? Annoying but not in the way that was significant enough.

Illusions, sounds and insults? Kaguya was barely coherent of the world around her, and both of them could easily sense where he was through his petty tricks. It would take a genuine professional mind fucking to hide from those two.

Random accusations and acting like a jackass? It would work on Hidan, but again, right now Kaguya was about as sane as Crypt.

He flew away, weaving between a hoard of boneless ivory hands and then dashing away to avoid being blasted by just as many mini-bijudama erupting from each of said hands, obliterating the local landscape. Even with his high chakra levels and several layers of conditioned gasses around him, he could still feel the intense heat and pressure of the damn things as they brushed past him, singing his clothes and in a couple of instances actually burning off a few layers of skin.

And of course her natural accuracy and perception were absurd with having probably some jacked up version of the Byakugan with the occasional use of the Rinnegan sprinkled on top. She barely looked like she was having trouble looking through his Seventh Sense, which was practically tailor made to mask himself from sensors.

Which left him with little options to hide now, didn't it? It's not like there were many cheap and stupidly easy exploits to use on the Hyuuga, other than the fact that they were all for the most part closet pervs.

Maybe the reverse Harem technique would work… once. Not that would help out in her current state.

The only other stupid thing that remotely worked on the Hyuuga with near one hundred percent certainty that he could remember was… was…

"Eh. Eheheheheheheheh."

Hidan didn't know why, but the sadistic grin on Naruto's face filled him with incredible unease.

More so when the blonde pointed accusingly at Kaguya's monstrous form before she could attack again. "CRYPT!"

Everyone around the world blinked in confusion, absolutely baffled by his actions.

"LIMITED EDITION ICE CREAM PERSON!"

o. o. o.

"… No…"

Hiruzen, Neji, Kin, and Lee all opened their mouths in genuine astonishment before quickly turning to look at Crypt.

Or rather, they turned to see the hole where he had been lodged in just seconds before.

"Holy shit that actually worked." Kin voiced what pretty much everyone was thinking.

o. o. o.

"… ineminemineminemine…"

It was not Naruto's words that gave the giant rabbit monster pause, but the instinctual knowledge that something horrible was suddenly about to happen. It was as if Hidan was going to unleash another strike upon her that would drive her clouded mind into insanity once more, only a thousand times more traumatizing.

To put things in perspective. Even in her hampered state of mind, Kaguya was experiencing what was the equivalent of swimming in the middle of the ocean with no one around, and suddenly hearing the Jaws theme song playing in the background for no reason whatsoever.

"Mineminemineminemine…"

Suddenly, Naruto didn't matter. The Kyubi didn't matter. Hidan didn't matter. Regaining her power didn't matter.

What did matter was whatever the hell was making her so instinctively on edge that she actually felt, dare she say it, fear.

"Bullshit!" Hidan shouted accusingly at Naruto, although it was clear that the madman was actually showing hints of nervousness as well. "Don't you dare pull that shit on me now! Calling Contract of all people here to help will break more than the rules, Lord!"

"Aaaah?" The accused pretended he was hard of hearing, clearing out an ear with a pinkie. "What are you talking about? Fighting? Why would I want one of those fuckups with me on something this small? They'd probably make things worse if I was ever dumb enough to ask for that."

"MinemineminemineMINEMINEMINE..."

"You called CONTRACT OF ALL PEOPLE! WHAT OTHER REASON WOULD THAT MONSTROSITY HAVE TO BE HERE OTHER TO FIGHT!?" Hidan yelled frantically. He wouldn't die from the turn of events. No. He was still claimed, but… but… he didn't dare want to imagine what he would experience from another extended encounter…

"MINEMINEMINEMINEMIIIIIINEEEEE!"

The earth a hundred meters to their side bulged and welled up like a spontaneously erupting volcano, before exploding, launching debris of all sizes into the air, along with one savagely grinning madman in a hybrid straightjacket coat.

"ICE CREAAAAAAM PERRRSSSSSOOOOOOOOON!"

o. o. o.

"One of us. One of us." Shadow slowly began to chant, as if she was possessed.

"One of us. One of us." Ghost joined her in perfect synchronization.

"ONE OF US! ONE OF US!" Waltz surprisingly added his voice and raised it a few decibels proudly.

"One of us. One of us." Text ran endlessly across the bottom of the screen like a never ending virus. Obviously, Scabbard was contributing to the chant as well.

Everyone around the insane family turned to either Sylvia or Dima.

"Family tradition." Sylvia sighed.

"When in doubt. Throw a Crypt at it. The guy's so messed up that the rules of reality itself rarely apply to him." Dima nodded. "Kid's ahead of the curve. Normally, most people don't figure out they can get away with that until a few years of being a full-fledged member. Why, I remember my first time using Crypt to solve my problems…"

o. o. o.

From an outside perspective, the image of Crypt flying head first towards a titanic rabbit beast of unknown origin and powers was about as confusing and stupid as watching a fly charging straight at the Raikage with his lightning cloak up.

"I'm gonna taste youuuuuuuu!"

From Kaguya's perspective though…

"̵̨͉͔͎̘̼̭͂͋͛̾̈́̈́͋͑́͠ͅI̶̧̤̫̝̥̰̯̳̙̜̳͂͂̓́́'̷̠̰̖̣̙͎͆̋M̴̡̝̣̱͉̺̦̄̅̒͗̅̏̕ ̸̡̺͇͇̿█̵̤͌̈́ơ̴̮͔̏̀͑͆͑̽͘͝͝͝N̴̩̻̖̼̖̼̱͇̔̐n̸̥̈̍̉͛̒̈́̀ ̷̝͚̒̽ ̶̝͉̂̆̀́͋̽̕T̸̪̜̬̓ͅa̴̫͒̑$̵̖̜͓̩̳̤̜̻͓̦͎̄̾͛̎͒̈́̀̑͗́͝ţ̵͙͍̭̬̯̞̝͔͓̈́̅́͜͠Ë̶̟͚̭̮̼͉̯̮̒͋͐ͅ ̵̛̠͔͋̐̈́̒̕͝͝Y̴̗̖͍͎̗͌͌͊̈́*̶̧͉̱̄̄̎̒̂̀͌Ų̵̞͖̻̀͗̃͋̍̓̃̈́̕u̶̢͓̳͓̞̪̼̩̗̅͛́̊̍̆̈́̓̈́͜͝▄̷̛̖͕͕̥̙̜͙͍̓̒͐̽͝U̵̢͇̩̬̝͇̣͔̎̅̈́ù̸̲̝̹͍͚̠̮̬̠̒̆̅́͒͜ͅṳ̷̧̢̯̠̖̮̱̄̊U̶͖̠̞͍̪̝̟̩͆͑̃̈́̓̑̕!̴̢̛̝̾͗͊͊͗͠!̴̡̞̗̰͇͉̗̠̆͐̀͝!̷̧̱̼̫̬̼͙̜̬̈̍̍̾͛̈́͒͘"̴̝͎͍͇̻̎͆̊͐͑

The oncoming abomination was so horrifying and traumatizing to look at that she was physically incapable of looking away, lest she leave herself unprepared for what it may do with her guard down. Every facet, every rule and law that should be a constant for all entities in this world was either fractured or marred once in contact with this broken monster's perverted façade. The only reason why it even physically appeared to be human was because all the pieces that made up its body happened to fall into place that way.

A monster. A genuine monster from beyond the realms of sanity and reality. A singularity of disjointed madness and power that made no sense under conventional-

"Quack."

The singularity of disjointed madness flopped flat onto her face like a wet towel, face first and legs spread eagle.

Right between all three of the giant rabbit's terrified eyes.

"…"

"…"

"… Nom nom nom nom nom."

"▄▄████████!?""

And just like that, the giant world ending eldritch rabbit was thrashing about wildly with all three eyes bugged out in a panic while trying to get Crypt off of its face.

If one could translate giant monster screaming, they would likely hear the rough equivalent of "get it off get it off get it off".

"Ahahahahaha!" Naruto, unlike pretty much the rest of the world, found the image absolutely hilarious. "The look! The look on her face! Ehehehehe!"

Hidan on the other hand, was preoccupied with not getting run over by the maddened monster that was rampaging more than normal.

"Why the hell did I let him do that?! The kid's a Family member!" He barely managed to avoid getting crushed as Kaguya literally started to roll on the ground in a mindless frenzy.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

"No! You know what?! Fuck this! I know what you're doing Lord, and I'm not falling for it!" Clearly having enough, Hidan looked up to where the real threat was above the clouds. Going for Naruto was an option, but even if he looked defenseless, he would not go down easily or quickly. In that time, his end might as well be guaranteed.

Gathering as much chakra as he could, the Priest jumped like a rocket to a nearby floating boulder kicked up by Crypt when he had appeared. Then another. His elevation increasing rapidly to the point that within a few seconds he was already halfway to the thick low hanging clouds.

"Ha. Hahaha." Naruto, on the other hand, had not given chase at all, only bothering to look up after Hidan had left. The smile had not left his face.

"He's not following…" Hidan glanced back quickly, only to be surprised by the lack of action from his enemy. "… Shit! Don't tell me he set up another tra-?!"

He couldn't say anything else though as the wind was knocked out of him after colliding face first into an invisible and flexible membrane, stretching forward like rubber before retracting instantly and launching him back to the earth like a small meteor.

And then rolled over by Kaguya.

Naruto patted himself silently on the back for a job well done, looking off into the far distance, where dozens, if not a hundred freshly made normal clones were standing with seals at the ready, maintaining a barrier over the entirety of the battlefield.

The adorable little bastards wouldn't be able to do a thing against Kaguya, and if Hidan managed to get even a glancing blow on one of them, they'd all vanish.

"You annoying little Bastards!"

Annoying. Adorable. Po-tae-toe. Po-ta-toe.

One of Hidan's pikes fired out from the cloud where the priest hid/crashed in like a Railgun projectile, piercing through the air at the original Naruto with such power and intensity that even he couldn't deflect it in time.

With a casual yawn, Naruto dashed out of the way of the attack as if it was nothing, letting it pass by at terrifying speeds, straight towards one of the clones supporting the barrier itself.

Said clone simply popped out of existence before it could be skewered. The barrier was pierced by the pinpoint attack, but otherwise it was completely intact.

So long as the clones popped before getting hit, and the original just stuck to avoiding any damage, and Crypt continued to be Crypt, Hidan was going to have a rough time escaping.

But, just in case…

Naruto whistled innocently, making a few seals as Hidan roared in frustration and tried to escape again, this time putting all his weight and power behind another one of his collapsible pikes in order to pierce his way through to freedom, looking like a bolt of lightning reaching for the sky.

"Aaand Wind Style. One Thousand Leagues."

"Ngh?! What now?!" Almost instantly, Hidan felt like he was plowing through a mountain instead of thin air, slowing down his momentum enormously to the point that only a second or two's worth of impediment had rendered his charge nearly helpless against the barrier, which in turn launched him back into the ground below without mercy.

… And then he was subsequently crushed by Kaguya again. It was clear to everyone that her attempts to get rid of Crypt had rendered her completely oblivious to whatever else was going on.

Naruto grinned proudly, making more seals before slamming his hands on the ground. "Earth Style. Swamp of the Underworld."

Ignoring the fact that Hidan was now trapped under a thick and viscous mud that was capped by an atmosphere nearly fifty times as dense as Earth's at sea level, Naruto looked up at where Kurama was putting the final touches on their coup de grace. Judging from the looks of things, it was almost done. "That does it Kurama. Next thing you're doing the moment we have free time is learning how to mold different sources of chakra together properly."

"Bite me. It was hard enough learning to get used to Nature energy as it was."

"No. I don't want to contract suck from you." Naruto flipped through several seals before pointing both of his hands up into the air. "You're taking too long. I'll finish the damn thing. You just keep it stable and fueling it."

The bickered constantly, completely ignoring Kaguya continuing to roll around as if she was part of some comedy sketch, the swamp that Hidan was trapped under turning a sickly corrupted color, welling up and…

BOOM!

Hidan unleashing enough chakra to blow up said swamp off of him.

The abandoned reaper rose from the world. Its blessing would be bestowed.

"Hah. Hah." The air was still too thick to move properly. No, that was an understatement. Any normal human would have been crushed under the pressure. Hell, any normal Jonin would have been out for the count under these circumstances. But with his heightened state and Presence, he could at least function adequately in this absurd setting.

He couldn't escape at this rate. The woman was useless, too occupied with Contract being latched onto her face… not that he could technically blame her for that. He'd probably be rolling around screaming his head off if he was in her position too.

On the other hand, that bastard Lord was just standing there with his hands up focusing on… damn it!

"I won't let you finish!" With a great effort, Hidan bolted forward, blood spewing from various holes in his body as he strained against the heavy atmosphere around him to charge at Naruto, weapons yearning for blood in each hand.

And yet, the target in question didn't move, focusing on what was in the sky with pure focus.

Several balls and blades of wind pelted the madman, but their effects were minimal at best as they skirted off of his body in his blind charge, surprising the target and making him look almost worried.

The reaper sews the crops, and yields the fruit that is the agony of life.

With a mighty heave, the three bladed scythe tore down and split Naruto in half.

o. o. o.

The fox in Hinata's arms yelped in pure pain.

But that was it.

"Naruto!" Shion shouted in alarm, as did many others in the crowd.

All of Naruto's close friends, on the other hand, looked at one another with the same dry expression.

Possessed by a God or not…

o. o. o.

BOOM!

The two halves of Naruto exploded violently.

Hidan must have been a complete moron to not have seen that coming.

Really, standing out in the middle of the open with their arms up to the sky in the middle of an intense battle? What kind of idiot would ever think that that was a good idea?

o. o. o.

At that moment, several hundred variations of a certain idiot savant planet buster level warrior saiyan sneezed at the same exact time.

Said sneezing has no relevance to the story in the slightest.

o. o. o.

At the same time, all of the clones holding up the barrier around the battlefield popped out of existence, unable to maintain their forms after the sensation of being split apart was echoed throughout all of them.

"Ngh. Finally." Hidan breathed in air from a balanced atmosphere again as he got back up, his wounds recovering already, albeit stunted from how many times he was blasted from the various Rasenshuriken earlier which left him with pretty much only half of his skin left.

Even with his nerves exposed, he didn't immediately notice the petal like fragments of color and chakra floating down around and on him. Harmless little notes that neither harmed nor hampered his condition, like a faint afternoon snow that couldn't even coat the local plantlife.

That crazy bastard had actually used a clone to distract him even after knowing the risks. No, it didn't matter. The barrier was gone now, so he could move freely again. All he needed to do now was just reach that damn jutsu and… and…

More colorful flecks of light and chakra began falling down from the heavens gently, giving the ravaged world around him a unique, almost ethereal image.

Hidan's angry expression lightened to one of numb frustration. "Oh… fuck me."

The camera rotated around Hidan and angled itself up, higher, and higher into the sky, until it revealed what he was looking at. What he had been afraid of since he had noticed it earlier.

o. o. o.

"Holy…" Ino blinked with wide eyes.

"Shit." Kiba finished, having the exact same thoughts as her. As did virtually everyone else in the stadium.

"No kidding." The clone blinked, just as impressed as the others, prompting all of them to look at him incredulously. "… I'm serious. It's never turned out like THAT before."

"I think I can say for all of us that we viciously hope that's a good thing." Shikamaru voiced his opinion, getting several mutters of agreement.

o. o. o.

"Well." Zabuza tried to find his voice as his mind tried to process what he was seeing, along with everyone else in the room. "… I guess we know where Isobu's chakra went now."

o. o. o.

"What the…" Ma was the first to notice what was happening in the middle of the chaos between the old men and the Akatsuki.

It turns out that Presence really was more useful than they thought, especially if the user was used to using it.

Case and point, Tobi could still pass through attacks, but when it came to Jiraiya's taijutsu, the sensation of hitting the Uchiha was less "swinging at thin air" and more "punching thick soup".

No final blows had been made, but the one eyed man was definitely feeling some discomfort if his odd movements were any indication. It was clear that the man had not participated in a real fight without overly relying on his hack skill for quite a while.

On the other side of things, Roshi and Onoki were having a time dealing with Sasori. The former pair had to be careful in order to avoid not to get poisoned by their enemy's absurdly wide range of abilities. The latter had to be careful in order not to get obliterated by his opponents' disgustingly overpowered techniques.

"Ma! Pay attention!" A vicious lance of water shot from Pa's mouth and speared through two of Sasori's Puppets that tried to sideline them while Jiraiya was busy trying to catch Tobi.

"Shut up! It's hard to pay attention when Naruto-chan is doing something absurd and making me question my eyes again!" The old woman snapped, getting everyone's attention. "That boy's put more wrinkles on my face in the last five years than I've gotten naturally over the past two centuries!"

"So she admits it…" Jiraiya glanced to the side with a brief smirk, only to catch sight of what had distracted Ma in the first place. "… Oh come on kid. Seriously? How the hell did you pull that bullshit off?"

Tobi would have escaped into his pocket dimension in the brief pause in Jiraiya's actions, except he had also been rendered incapable of any extreme action at the sight of Naruto's latest display of absurdity.

As were Roshi, Onoki, and Sasori.

o. o. o.

"… Shiny. It's very shiny and colorful this time around." Naruto crossed his arms with a faux serious look on his face.

"Well, that's apparently what happens when you use most of the Biju's chakra simultaneously, and spread it out at the same time. Took long enough to get this stabilized. It would have been done already if it had just been our chakra, but I don't think that would have been enough to deal with Kaguya." Kurama surmised, looking around with some curiosity, his body returning to that of a four tailed fox. "Though even I have to admit that the results are rather interesting."

"And shiny."

"And?" The Biju pressed, knowing that it was better to get it out of the way now rather than let it stew and fester for later.

"It's so cool." Waterfall tears of pride fell down Naruto's cheeks endlessly.

"Mhm." Kurama looked up…

… Or rather, down at his opponents.

And at the world beneath them, as they were standing upside down on a soft, almost rainbow, no, a kaleidoscope like field of translucent grasslike protrusions that were constantly shedding and falling to the earth.

The camera slowly zoomed out.

And out.

And out.

And revealed that they were standing on the perpetually rotating blades of a titanic, multilayered Rasenshuriken with a pulsing pitch black core that was a hundred meters in diameter, slowly fading into existence through the clouds and haze.

The blades themselves though, extended far beyond that.

Five kilometers in either direction at bare minimum. One could say that the radius of each blade was the radius of a Biju's tail once it had truly fully manifested its power.

Each circle of chakra blades was a different color. Each circle hummed a slightly different pitch as it spun quickly, yet shedding off flakes of itself in minute quantities. Red. Blue. Green. Orange. Brown. Purple.

It looked like a giant flower.

This jutsu was not simply some attack, but genuinely looked like a giant fortress designed to overwhelm and obliterate anything in its path, be it Army, Biju or Village.

"Why don't you show everyone how cool it can be already?"

"Mmm." Naruto walked closer to the core, not at all affected by the spinning blades underneath his feet, and made a simple half ram seal.

For the first time since Crypt had started to "taste" Kaguya, she had noticed something about the outside world.

"World Style. Grand Spiral Lotus."

The flower itself appeared to spin just slightly faster than usual, but the outcome of such an action was immediate, as the softly falling petals that naturally shed from the blades turned into a never ending rain of chakra blades and bullets.

Or rather, they were more akin to fissures and beams of physical light.

In an instant, everything beneath the giant flower was absolutely devastated and obliterated. A never ending multicolored rain of pure destruction hailed down on the Earth from Heaven as if it was a divine judgement, sparing no quarter or opening beneath it.

Somehow, even Kaguya was not immune to the destruction as her titanic body was pelted and hammered relentlessly by the chaos to the point that even she could not be seen from a distance outside of the explosions that were rocking the landscape.

And yet, after thirty seconds, it stopped as soon as it began.

Naruto blinked as he looked at what he wrought from his areal perch, and turned to his partner in crime. "… This might actually be overkill for us."

"I don't want to hear that from you."

"No seriously. We did NOT put this much chakra into this monstrosity. Sage Mode. Level Two chakra. Our last second donators. I'm doing the math and it's not adding up. The only thing I can think of that would give us this massive boost is that having so many of the Biju chipping into this thing and harmonizing them might have had a magnification effect."

"Makes sense, but I don't see how this is a problem. We'll probably need the extra power to do what you're planning."

"I'm worried because we have witnesses this time." Naruto pointed to the timespace camera that was just a few meters away from them, recording everything they were saying. "You have any idea how badly this can turn out for my public image if everyone has the wrong impression of me from making this thing?"

"I thought your public image was already a catastrophe worthy of being called Contemporary Abstract Art."

"It is, but at least I wasn't at risk of being considered a threat to international stability. Now everyone's gonna be all over my ass worried I'll destroy society as we know it just by breathing funny. Such a pain."

"Humans tend to be useless creatures like that." Kurama looked up at the Earth. "Best finish things up, lest we give them time to actually do something."

"Mmm. Yeah." Naruto sighed. But First… "Oi! Crypt!"

Way back on the ground, attached to the beaten heap that was Kaguya's body, a black leech like entity dislodged itself from what appeared to be her face, completely undeterred from the cataclysm that just occurred. "WHAT?!"

"WHAT'S THE VERDICT!?"

"TASTES LIKE OLD PERSON AND WHEAT!"

"ANY SPECIFIC FLAVOR?!"

"TAPIOCA!"

"OLD ALIEN ICE CREAM LADY TASTES LIKE TAPIOCA?!"

"WITH A HINT OF PASSIONFRUIT!"

"HOW DOES THAT WORK?!"

"I BELIEVE THAT COPIOUS AMOUNTS OF ALCOHOL WAS INCLUDED IN THE ICE CREAM MAKING PROCESS!"

"FANTASTIC! THE ALBINO ALIEN ICE CREAM LADY IS AN ALCOHOLIC! THAT MAKES THINGS SO MUCH BETTER! NO WONDER HER DECISION MAKING SKILLS ARE SO ABYSMAL!"

Kaguya's massive frame twitched.

"I DON'T THINK SHE HIT HER MID LIFE CRISIS THAT WELL!"

"NO SHIT!"

It twitched again.

"SHE SMELLS FUNNY TOO! LIKE AN OLD PERSON LIVING IN A TREE HOUSE FOR WAY TOO LONG! I THINK THERE WAS SOME SQUIRREL MIXED INTO IT!"'

Apparently, alien or not, being called out on one's age and smell was something that all women took offence to. Even when they were transformed into giant rabbit monsters.

"▄▄████████!" With a loud roar, Kaguya launched not one but three massive Bijudamas straight at Naruto, rage clearly marring her already twisted features.

"It didn't work then. It won't work now." The target sighed, waving one of his hands lazily.

The giant lotus in the sky rotated itself just a small fraction. Not even a quarter circle. And yet the space below it seemed to contort as if the world itself was turned upside down.

The titanic blasts of power were instantly twisted and redirected into harmless directions.

The ground itself seemed to pinch and coil itself below the epicenter of the rotation, spiking up as if prompted to by a massive Earth Style ninjutsu to instantly form a new mountain in the landscape.

The atmosphere spun, and the widest twister yet was instantly formed around the entire battleground, soon accompanied by smaller, yet still destructive funnels both inside and outside the main body, followed by rampaging bolts of lightning generated from the static electricity.

The damage done in the wake of the previous gesture absolutely paled in comparison to the current display.

Naruto glared down at Kaguya, who was absolutely hammered by his devastating counterattack despite her huge body.

On the inside though…

"Too much. Too much. This is waaaaay too much power. Oh crap did I just wipe out a portion of Iwagakure? I only meant to redirect the damn blasts! … But it's just so damn cool!"

"Oi. Overdoing it much?"

"It was an accident! It's not my fault!" He completely broke his serious façade without even trying to keep it up and began to panic.

The fox blinked in curiosity. "You're normally on top of controlling the blowback from your techniques."

"I'm telling you this thing is seriously overkill! Controlling the after effects of it in my base state is like telling a Genin to control the water damage from a legitimate tsunami! I have limits man!"

Kurama looked at Naruto skeptically before examining the giant disk in earnest.

He had to admit, they had not anticipated that this jutsu would turn out so… grandiose, with the addition of his siblings' chakra. It technically wasn't even complete without the Gobi's and Rokubi's chakra, but even so he could feel… an extra factor. Almost as if the chakra of the Biju were mixing to reveal or unlock a whole new power that couldn't be seen with just one piece of the puzzle.

It was a power that felt eerily like Kaguya's and the World Tree's in a way.

"… Finish it. This thing is too dangerous to play around with as you are. You'll likely do more damage to the world than Kaguya in your current respective states if things drag out any further."

Naruto's expression flipped almost instantly, darkening at his partner's accusation, but he couldn't argue against it. Not with their current setup. "Right."

The pair leapt back and away from the core of the giant rotating flower, its maker flipping through several dozen seals.

On the ground, Hidan staggered to his feet. His body was regenerating from the absolute thrashing that it had undergone, the invasive chakra of Naruto and the Biju stagnated his progress to the point that he was still realigning several of his bones.

"That kid… this is just unfair. If this was a game, wouldn't this setup make it look like he was the boss and not me or that dumbass woman? What sort of bad joke is… ah. Ahaha. Right. A joke. I forgot. Of course someone from the Family would turn it around like that."

He saw it now.

The kid didn't train himself to beat the final boss of this world.

He had trained to BE the final boss.

Just like every other notable Family member out there.

Power wasn't going to cut it. Not for this. He needed to use his nature in earnest to turn this around and fast. That thing in the air… it just wasn't power. It was a borderline representation of the world's authority itself.

He needed more authority than what he had now to beat this thing. He wouldn't die, and reveled in pain and agony, but… he didn't look forward to being exposed to whatever this thing could do to him if given time.

He laughed, looking around at the devastation around him. The upturned boulders. The rampaging twisters and errant lightning bolts.

… Time. Isn't that a joke though? Just by shedding chakra and turning just a tiny bit, that massive thing had completely remade the landscape. Just by being underneath it, the boy had rendered time a near non-factor for anything that wasn't a damn high ranking Holy Class, an entity that destroyed cities with each attack it made.

He had to act now or he wouldn't be able to act at all.

Thankfully, he had spilled more than enough blood recently to get a seal setup. A quick spin had landed him inside the standard Jashinist mark, and his scythe was at the ready. His skin was still warped, indicating that his connection to Nagato was still intact.

It was just one life. But one that held the Rinnegan, and a minor Presence user to boot. The boost would be enough to give him a chance to-?!

Naruto blinked.

o. o. o.

Ghost sighed faintly, stretching a bit as if to get a kink out of his muscles.

o. o. o.

Far away from the fighting, a man with red hair and Rinnegan eyes smiled apologetically, blood pouring from his mouth, nose, and ears.

It was a messy, but fast and painless death.

Itachi Uchiha remained stoic.

Konan was crying quietly.

Naruto's clone was quiet and angry, an open hand pointed at the dead man's head.

o. o. o.

"This, this is, what's going on? He's dead, but… where is his essence? Where is his authority?" Hidan looked around frantically while his skin returned to normal, as if expecting someone to jump out and explain what had just happened.

He had felt the connection. The agony shared between him and his target. The ritual had worked, Pain was his the second that he died. There shouldn't have been anyone or anything that would know or be able to actively interrupt that fact except…

He knew Naruto had been angry. He knew the kid would come after him like a hound from hell. But, but but but, to find a way to stop his ritual from the other side?! That was impossible!

It was one thing if he was channeling a fragment of a local God, but another entirely in his current case, being an extension of the multiversal sentience known as Empathy. Even if his ritual didn't kill the target immediately, his mark was there. As good as the kid was, canceling a claim with that label on it was just impossible…

… Unless he had help.

Nagato was dead, but his essence didn't go to Hidan. Which meant, it was somewhere else. The most likely case was that someone else took it.

He turned to the camera with a mixed expression of disbelief, rage, and betrayal.

Ghost waved back casually, as if to confirm his suspicions.

"You… fucking KILL STEALING BASTARDS! YOU TOOK MY SACRIFICE?! YOU AREN'T SUPPOSED TO BE ALLOWED TO INTERFERE!"

Ghost merely grinned, and held up two fingers, then closing one of them to leave his middle finger pointing up in the air.

Most would have assumed that he was simply mocking Hidan, but the message was clear.

He had killed Sai. And, while the final deed was not his, assured the imminent demise of Nagato.

He could only murder one more individual of worth. Anything more than that…

The Lord looked down from the Heavens, and was enraged with disgust.

Hidan was snapped out of his thoughts as the wind was stirred heavily, making it hard to stand still in the chaos.

"No." Naruto's voice echoed between the folds of countless bodiless howling, responding to Hidan's outraged accusation. "They didn't do anything. I simply helped a friend, a little too late."

The teen's hands made the final seal.

"Sky Art. Exile."

The pitch black core of the Lotus, spiraling with a kaleidoscope of colors that made it resemble a black hole, unwound itself, spinning and pushing outward, contorting the petals around it to mold into a new shape as if it was the bud of a second flower.

Wider and wider it unraveled, until its secret was revealed.

Nothing.

The second flower was nothing.

Nothing at its core. Nothing above it.

Nothing, all the way up until there was simply more of "nothing".

Outside of Earth. Outside of Heaven. Outside of hope.

To a realm where there was no blessing.

Exile. It was a self-explanatory, yet horrifically underwhelming name for what it was.

The petals of the Grand Spiral Lotus spun once more, and this time it did not stop. The world below, in turn, lurched and buckled, as if terrified of the sight above.

Recoiling, and pulling away… only to give in, and fall to the sky.

"You asked how I was going to deal with you, Reaper." Naruto casually stood upside down upon the spinning titanic petals. "This is my answer. I won't kill you. I won't seal you. I won't trap you. I won't pin you down or try to obliterate you. I am merely going to make you go away for as long as I say, until the ones that have claimed your head are ready."

The Heavens have made their judgment.

"Be at ease. For this will hurt immensely for quite some time. Afterwards though… the only agony experienced and received you will bear witness to, will be only yours."

"No… no no no no NO NO NO NO NO!" Hidan shouted frantically as the world around him plummeted upwards, drawn by countless absurd forces to a fate that were causing an excellent imitation of the Apocalypse.

He wouldn't escape though. The battlefield was surrounded by a titanic twister that required a tremendous amount of power to get through. Power that Hidan didn't have. Nor was he capable of resisting the forces that would send him outside of orbit. His powers were based on the living. On Life. On feelings, sympathy, reflections of the soul. The power he could generate was a result of the power his body could produce and his Presence.

Against living opponents, no, against anything that had sentience, he was a nightmare, but this? What could only be considered a manmade natural disaster on a cataclysmic scale?

For the first time since Hidan had no longer truly been Hidan, he had felt fear.

Chunks of the world the size of city blocks and growing were heaved into the sky like a hungry pit without end. It was an unreal display of unreal power that went against the laws of nature.

Ironically, it was fitting that this was what would defeat the madman.

The original inspiration for this move had been, ironically, from Nagato's Chibaku Tensei, in another lifetime. Pulling one world into another. A final option not designed to murder, but capture, paralyze, and devastate on a scale that was more suited for imagination than reality, with a force that could only be described as a work of fiction.

Hidan tried to outrun it for a time, jumping from one excavated chunk of earth to the next. However, the air around him was too heavy and with every passing second it took longer for him to make any progress in staving off the inevitable.

Kaguya on the other hand, being a giant monster that was the size of a city block with innate control over her natural timespace, put up a significantly stronger fight against the pull of the titanic chakra flower while constantly unloading chakra blasts at it in an attempt to disrupt it.

Sadly, her attempts fared as well as Hidan's. The Lotus' slow rotations were contorting space below it, bending the paths of the attacks harmlessly though the empty center of the technique.

She tried to manifest a larger bomb than before, but it was barely halfway formed before a giant twister reached down from the skies like a perpetually rotating giant tentacle and hammered her across the face. It didn't do much damage, but it did distract her enough to lose focus and start to also fall up towards the literal hole in the sky.

Hidan slammed flat footed on a giant boulder with enough force to shatter one side, however even that wasn't enough to make the thing stall the slightest in its accelerating ascent.

If he couldn't escape, he'd just have to kill the brat at the last second.

He made little progress trying to run, but Hidan's jump towards the sky made him look like a twisted firework that had yet to explode.

"Hey Lord! I'm gonna pluck your pussy assed flower with my Scythe! Figuratively and Literally!"

Turning his attention to the insane bastard, Naruto lazily lifted a hand to redirect the biggest piles of debris into his path with terrifying velocity. Had they been on the ground, such an attack would have easily been considered A rank in destruction and chakra cost, even if it was simple in concept.

Hidan was having none of that though, and viciously sliced through each and every tower sized boulder with ease with a crimson scythe that radiated with corrupted otherworldly power. His ascent curving and fighting against the twisted space below the flower as he charged towards his main target.

He wouldn't screw around this time. He'd kill the Lord with his bare hands and take his authority for his own. Then even that bitch wouldn't be able to usurp his position.

The biggest boulder yet got in his way. A monolith of pitch black stone that was probably important to Iwa in some way or another.

It broke into pieces in but a second under Hidan's relentless berserk assault, opening the way straight to that annoying blonde prick who FINALLY looked worried.

Ah. So that's how it was. How fortunate. This giant chakra flower was terrifyingly powerful, but there was some limit to its versatility. It could generate storms that belonged to the apocalypse. It could bend space as if it were the advent of an old God. It could bombard the world with chakra. It could even rip apart the earth below and throw it all into space. It could probably do even more than that. But, it couldn't do all of it at once. Otherwise, Hidan wouldn't have been able to get so close so easily without being blasted into pieces… again.

"I think he's pissed." The blonde began to sweat, making seals and gathering chakra.

"You think?!" Kurama's tails began to whip around violently, stirring up their own gale force winds in the process.

Chakra was unleashed. Blades and tails were unleashed. Stones were thrown.

All were shorn away by the three bladed scythe, which was glowing with more and more power by the second.

"Oh fuck!" Naruto tried to move, only to move a second too late have his right arm severed.

Hidan grin widely in vicious satisfaction and victory… as he turned around and threw his scythe behind him. "FOUND YOU!"

A hundred meters away, among one of the many flying piles of rubble that Hidan had made, his scythe tore apart a random rock.

Or rather, it appeared to be a random rock. Naruto transformed as he popped back into existence, hacked into pieces and blood flying everywhere with a surprised look on his face.

"I told you, you dumbass! I can sense your pain!" He couldn't help but gloat as he mentally called back his trademark weapon. Insane or not, he was experienced enough to know when he was being led on, especially after suffering through many of this asshole's tricks.

Jumping from stone to stone was easy enough, even when he was just on the verge of getting sucked into space. All he had to do now was just keep moving until this giant monstrosity lost enough momentum to stop sucking and he'd be in the clear.

… Soon.

He jumped over some more boulders.

… Soon.

The bigger chunks of stone were catching up to him now. It was starting to be a pain to get through and around them all.

… Any day now.

"Don't tell me this thing is fucking autonomous!" Hidan started to lose his patience as he plowed through the third massive slab of sheet rock lest he get too close to the event horizon of the Grand Spiral Lotus. Hell, at this rate even Kaguya was going to reach him, and odds were high that he couldn't cut through her fat ass…

Wait. Why was her path taking her in his direction?

"Oh you've got to be…" Hidan's gaze turned to where Naruto's hacked body was, right as it entered the black hole in the center of the Lotus, and vanished.

Another clone?

"No… but it was, where is the damn original?!"

He was Empathy. He was the transmission of pain between living beings. Hell, even the agony he inflicted on clones could be felt by the originals…

So why couldn't he find his opponent?

He looked down to a massive source of agony of various kinds. Hunger. Physical. Emotional. It was Kaguya, raging about at anything and everything in her grasp. Even she knew that getting caught in the center of the Flower would not be in her best interests.

He looked to the side to see another source of pain, but this one tempered and resisted. The fox had distanced itself from the center, nearly a kilometer across the Lotus' petals, far out of his reach with four tails floating in the chaotic winds around it, two of which were shaved and injured slightly when Hidan had batted them aside in his ascent. The damn thing was glaring back at him, but it wasn't attacking or doing anything. It was just sitting there.

Was it the reason why the jutsu was still going? … No. The Fox didn't look like it was focusing on any jutsu in the slightest.

Damn. Damn damn damn damn DAMN!

Even from this distance, he could see the Fox smirk at his frustration.

A trap.

The Lord had used himself as a trap. Only he didn't even know where the little bastard was anymore!

He cursed up a storm, but couldn't ignore the facts. He couldn't find his main target anymore, and he was about to get thrown into space. He had only one option that would give him a hope of escaping now.

"I'll kill the brat another day." His gaze turned down. Not at the earth, but at the giant rabbit below him. If he could take her authority, he might be able to get out of this mess.

Kaguya must have noticed his gaze though, as she instantly turned to look at him with an equally vicious expression, as if insulted that he would dare consider her prey.

At once the two charged at one another with primal fury, as if the other was to blame for their current situation. Hands and blades at the ready, they soon made their wrath known to is that a cow?

It took a moment for both monsters to register that indeed, there was a massive floating chunk of stone carved to look like a cow floating in between them.

"Moo."

It moo'd.

… It was also apparently covered in exploding tags.

Crypt finally was distracted from his absurd buffet and looked at the oddity with one eye, seeing as the other had decided to be lazy at the moment. "Oh! Hi Corvo, training cow of impending screams! Are we salting the earth with the misery, tears, and disappointment of useless scrubs again?! Why didn't you tell me!? Where's my good underwear and utensils!? AHHH! I'M SO UNPREPAIRED!"

BOOM!

The cow exploded.

o. o. o.

"The cow…" Kiba's eyes were shadowed.

"He had to use the cow." Chouji wasn't much more thrilled.

"Traitor." Ino's fingers were twitching.

"We will make him take a sacred vow to never wield that monstrosity within our presence." Sakura stated with finality. "Lest there be dire consequences."

"Agreed." Every shinobi there that had the misfortune of being trained by Ghost bobbed their heads in agreement before turning their justified anger to the clone in Hinata's arms.

It wisely pretended to be unconscious from the latest double serving of lethal pain it had experienced from Hidan's attacks.

No matter how terrifying Hinata's glowing fingers were, hovering just a few centimeters from its left eyeball.

Hopefully they didn't ask where he got the exploding tags for the cow.

He didn't want them to know about his backup exploding tag scroll just yet.

o. o. o.

The titanic explosion did little damage to either monster, but it did blow Hidan away from Kaguya, and knock Crypt off of his perch.

Unlike literally everything around him though, Crypt fell like a rag doll back to the earth as if physics still worked for him.

"Ah. I'm falling. Wheee!" This turn of events didn't seem to bother him in the slightest. "Bye Foxy! Bye tingly man who likes touching people and making them feel uncomfortable! Bye crazy old tapioca ice cream lady! I love you!"

Judging from the look of horror and fear on the giant rabbit's face, she not only retained enough intelligence to know what he was seeing, but reacted strongly enough to it that she didn't bother to hide her thoughts on the matter.

Crypt landed face first on another flying boulder, broke his spine in half backwards, picked himself up, tilted his shattered neck to the side, and looked at some empty space near him. "Oh! Hi minion! Why are you sleeping?"

If he was expecting anything to happen, the immortal was disappointed when nothing happened in front of him.

What the audience didn't expect was for the same madman to suddenly kick a small rock by his feet like a child, launching it at bullet speeds into the air in front of him, and hitting something that was not visible to the naked eye and knocking that into another slab of stone nearby.

"Gah!" Naruto, bug eyed and completely caught off guard, coughed out blood as he was embedded upside down into the stone with the offending projectile equally lodged into his stomach. "Fuck! What the hell Crypt!?"

"Is it nap time?" The perpetrator asked confused.

"You idiot! Secret Family art number seven!"

Thump. "Zzzzzz." Crypt immediately feel on his back and fell asleep.

Naruto chucked the stone that Crypt kicked at him and nailed the idiot in the head. "Dumbass! That was what I was doing! I wasn't telling you to do it!"

Yup. Naruto had been asleep for roughly the past minute. Completely numb to the world around him, to the exhaustion that was taking over his body, and the metaphysical pain that was transferred to him whenever Hidan tore apart his clones.

And people thought that being able to fall asleep on the spot was a stupid skill to have. Plebeians.

While his enemies were fighting among themselves, the original was resting and recovering what he could while falling against the forces of his own technique, floating like a leaf and harmlessly avoiding any and everything that was in his way.

It was one of the first things that he had learned after being chucked off of that damn cliff that dropped off into the literal abyss several hundred times.

Fucking cliffs.

"Ah. The floor's half-brother. A worthy first adversary."

Naruto opened his mouth to respond before realizing that he hadn't actually said anything about cliffs yet, thought about it for a moment, and then realized it was best not to go further down that particular path. "… The floor's down there Crypt."

"Try to hide from me while I'm tasting ice cream will you?! I'll show you the power of me while hyped up on old person sugar!" In standard fashion, the idiot rolled like a log and fell off the edge like dead weight. A very uninspiring and dull exit given the circumstances… even if Crypt was literally nowhere to be found the second he vanished from sight.

"LOOOOOORD!" Hidan was glowing with power and crimson with rage as he tried to fight against the tide of gravity and debris to try and get to Naruto. It was like swimming up a raging river that was swamped with trash and other things to make it near impossible.

The only problem with that was Naruto was both far out of reach, and completely uninhibited by the effects of his own technique. He literally didn't have to do anything at this point.

As if to rub salt in the wound, with a mental nudge, the giant platform he was on began to rotate so that he would soon be out of sight on the other side, allowing Hidan's last view of him to be with a savage shit eating grin and flipping two birds.

There was no point in wasting any more words on this prick. Sometimes silence was the best insult of all.

A dozen or so blades of pure corrupted empathy sliced through the area where he was, but as fast and powerful as they were, they originated at too great a distance for them to pose any threat to Naruto, who simply walked and wove around the attacks as if he was doing a little dance.

"Buh bye now." Naruto held up two fingers and focused.

The Flower turned, and everything below it was yanked into its core.

Hidan and Kaguya had managed to put up a fight before, but the pull they were experiencing vastly outmuscled what they could do.

Desperately they tried to run away, using the debris that they came across as temporary footholds and platforms but they were too close now to make much difference. Every time they made some progress, they were bombarded with the kilotons of stone and dirt that forced them to either blast it all out of the way or pause and think of how to get around the mess.

From an outside perspective, it almost looked like a supernatural version of the nightmare that some kids had about getting sucked down the bathtub drain.

Hidan, the closer of the two, reached the core first.

Despite literal mountains' worth of stone and dirt reaching it before him, he saw none of it looking up. The deep black and blue sky above him was a perfect empty canvas that held an alien like beauty that even he had to acknowledge.

And then, he saw to his right a massive boulder the size of a skyscraper enter the void just before him. One moment it was there. The next it appeared as if it was contorting to forces that he could not see or make sense of.

And the next, it was gone. Blinked out of existence, with only the slightest hints and signs made that it had been blasted forward into the void as if it was a bullet.

"Ohhhh shiiiIIIIIIIIIIT!" He made one last attempt to distance himself from his literal final destination, throwing his scythe at Kaguya in an attempt to pull himself to safety. Unfortunately, the giant rabbit roared at that moment, sending an omnidirectional shockwave out. It deflected the weapon into a direction that made it absolutely useless.

"FUUUUU-!"

And then he was gone.

"▄▄████████!""

Kaguya put up a bigger fight than Hidan, countless arms spawning from her body grabbing onto debris to push her away from her fate. Combined with her own innate timespace powers, she might have actually had a shot of getting away had Naruto not doubled the force pulling her in and assaulting her with projectiles almost as big as she was.

"Old lady's more stubborn than Grandma." Naruto mused, taking out a kunai, running a finger along its edge, spilling blood and channeling chakra into it, then casually tossing it into the air behind him. "Pity she's just a scrub."

Naruto jumped off the boulder a moment later to avoid being blasted by a narrow Bijudama beam that followed him, tearing apart anything and everything it came in contact with except the target in question.

It was like Naruto was a fly, moving around erratically and making sharp turns that the beam couldn't follow well. To add insult to injury, the teen looked almost bored as he jumped from foothold to foothold with no real pattern or goal in mind, only changing his path midflight whenever the beam looked like it was getting a bit too close for comfort.

His expression changed little, even after the Gobi's and Rokubi's heads popped out from Kaguya's shoulders and added their own blasts of raw power to the mix. The destruction wrought to the sky and earth was absolutely devastating, and yet it seemed to be impossible to land a bead on the annoying little bastard.

Behind him, the harmless piece of metal flew aimlessly into the sky and was immediately dragged into the vortex that was his technique. Blown this way and that by the errant streams of air with no real pattern to it…

And yet the small tool, miniscule and inconsequential, somehow managed to fly completely unnoticed, until it jabbed itself into the center of one of Kaguya's oversized Byakugan. The chakra infusing it and enhancing its weight giving it just enough momentum to bypass the natural defenses that normally protected her.

The explosion was massive, and the flash of light it gave off was absolutely blinding, no, the flash of light's intensity was so extreme that it was easy to tell that more power went into that than the explosion. Even so, the power in that knife, compared to the giant monster, was at best a speck of dust.

A speck of dust that exploded with the light of a laser pointer that had just been jammed violently into an eye and was hypersensitive to chakra.

"▄▄████████!?""

With that, Kaguya's hold on her situation was shattered, if only for a moment.

Her countless hands slipped. Her body lurched back.

The flower contorted, as if weighed down momentarily surprised by the massive beast it was trying to shoot outside of the planet.

And then she was gone.

o. o. o.

The Stadium was quiet. Not out of surprise, alarm, disbelief, anger, humor, or anything of that nature.

It was one of relief. A relief that they had all been waiting for, but did not know of, or expected. Of unexpected gratitude, like a weight had just been lifted from their shoulders.

Someone in the lower levels broke the silence first. "… Is it over?"

One didn't need sharp ears to hear the sound of several specific people face palming themselves incredibly hard, followed by a series of loud and exasperated groans.

"Who said it!? Who's the down-syndrome cockbite that couldn't keep their mouth shut for ten seconds?! Because when I find you I'm going to put you out of our misery for the sake of all everyone that is capable enough to go throughout their lives without looking up to Crypt for his intelligence!"

o. o. o.

Kurama landed on the floating boulder Naruto was sitting on just as the latter had closed up the center of the Grand Spiral Lotus into a giant swirling black ball again. Even though his host looked fine, he could tell that the young man was exhausted physically and mentally. His chakra reserves could recover incredibly quickly if they wanted to address it, but his stamina was reaching its limits. It would not be to either of their benefits to continue with any extreme activities for the near future. "You had me worried for a moment. I almost thought I'd have to step in at the end."

Naruto didn't respond immediately, instead appearing to be deep in thought. "Checklist."

The fox frowned, knowing exactly what Naruto was getting at. "Hidan."

o. o. o.

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK!"

Hidan swore rampantly in the thin air as he attempted to return to the planet's surface from the upper atmosphere. However, no matter how much he tried or how hard he managed to push himself off of the sparse debris that he came across, he always seemed to somehow slide around a thin barrier that prevented him from re-entry.

The Exiled are not allowed to return to the Heavens. Not from the Earth. Not from the beyond.

"That bastard! He cursed me!?" He swore, a mix of emotions from bewilderment to rage to being genuine impressed ran through his veins, even as they were assaulted by the cold of space.

When though? Something as potent and vicious enough to keep him outside of the Earth's atmosphere itself would require more than just experience and skill. It would require power and direct…

The clone, radiating with so much of both the Kyubi's power and Natural energy that no one was able to tell the difference between it and the original, hammered an open palm into the Priest's chest with enough force to shatter his bones and create a trench behind him that extended for Kilometers. Despite that, Hidan had remained in place.

All that power and all it had done was… oh, that cunning brat.

In hindsight it had been odd why that blow hadn't sent him flying despite the absurd raw power that clone had been packing. Naruto hadn't used the hit to slap a half assed seal on his chest. It had been to impose the curse prematurely, hiding it dormant under the damage and the prior seal and only coming into play once Hidan was in a place for it to be relevant.

He had to give credit where it was due though. The more conditions and restrictions there were on a curse's activation and implementation, the more effective and efficient it was. To impose one on an Acolyte of all things without their immediate knowing was not something many could claim.

He couldn't enter the atmosphere under his own power anymore. The rules were against him. He didn't have anyone's blood on him to curse someone. There was not a single living thing nearby that he could afflict or manipulate with his powers. He was not knowledgeable or skilled enough in Time Space Manipulation to try and relocate himself into a better position. He really was stranded in space.

However…

o. o. o.

"In orbit and not allowed back in until I say so. He can't teleport and he's not strong enough to break my curse."

"Kaguya can teleport."

o. o. o.

The Giant White Rabbit was not floating in space. Instead, an ivory woman of unmatched beauty took its place, rattled, frustrated, and disheveled. She was no longer immaculate, but injured, tired, dare she even think… beaten.

"That brat. To think that he would put up such a fight…" Zetsu hissed from inside her cloak. "I'm sorry, Mother. I underestimated him. But, that child has underestimated you and your power. We are outside his territory now. Once you have recovered, it would be child's play to return to the planet and hunt the other Biju."

"I would not recommend that." Kaguya's and Zetsu's eyes widened as a voice that was not their own joined the conversation. "That is of course, you desire to be reduced to little more than a casual afternoon confectionary to an incomprehensible abomination once more."

"… Hagoromo." Her voice barely travelled in the thin outer atmosphere of the planet, but it was well heard by those in the conversation.

"Mother. It has been some time." The disembodied Sage of Six Paths greeted from within her mind.

No, within her left eye.

"How did, wait, the kunai. It wasn't just to distract mother so she would get caught." Zetsu was beside himself with rage. "It had your chakra. You were helping the Kyubi all along? Hagoromo?"

"Hm. I suppose, though I must humbly admit my role in today's events were not as significant as you may assume." The Sage admitted. "Ultimately, I doubt the conclusion of your conflict with the current incarnation of Asura would have differed much with or without my interjection. I merely assisted in making the end results, cleaner. That child…"

Before Zetsu could speak his mind at his half-brother, Kaguya interrupted. "Why are you here, Hagoromo?"

"Mother?"

"Foolishly sentimental as you are, you would not approach me so carelessly in any form unless you thought it was worth the risk, Hagoromo. You would not risk to repeat the mistakes of your youth so readily. That is why you waited for my encounter with Asura to end, is it not? For me to be so weary of battle, that I willingly harbor the slightest desire of humoring your request." She had a good idea what her wayward son wanted, but wished to hear the words from his own mouth.

"I merely desire for something that occasionally held my fleeting curiosity since I was a child. It has only been recently that I recalled ever having it, and yet I must berate myself for ever allowing to be little more than that for so long." There was the faintest hint of genuine emotion in his normally dead even tone.

"I believe now would be an appropriate time to finally hold a conversation about your origins and our extended family, Mother. Unless, of course, you wish to continue your reckless behavior and risk being treated as an oversized treat by that insane madman again."

Kaguya shivered, and it wasn't due to the cold of being in space.

o. o. o.

"I got that covered. Also made sure that she and Hidan wouldn't have intersecting orbits." Naruto waved briefly, but was clearly still focused on the task at hand. "If she comes back, we'll get head's up."

"Mmm." The Fox clearly wasn't pleased with his answer, but let it pass. Naruto wasn't one to simply wave off such a big problem unless he was certain of the outcome. "Nagato."

o. o. o.

Naruto's Level Two clone sat on a rock, exhausted emotionally from the recent events, and physically from the feedback from Hidan's abilities.

A short distance away, Itachi and Konan stood with the corpse of Nagato wrapped up in paper floating next to them.

In Konan's hands was a single black chain link. Whether Ghost had done them a favor and restored Nagato's memories at the last moment, or it had been something that was going to happen regardless was anyone's guess. All the clone knew was that Nagato had managed to have a few final words to Konan before accepting euthanasia.

"I'll get Yahiko's body to you later, when everything calms down." The clone offered, knowing that the original had already stored away the corpse shortly after Kaguya woke up when the dust was settling.

"… I'll have your answer by then." Konan didn't take her gaze off of the unidentifiable metal in her hand, her thoughts masked completely.

"Keep her safe Itachi. Things are messed up as it is."

"Mmm." Itachi knew that Naruto was referring to Tobi. There was no telling what that man would do now with everything turned on its head. If Ame lost its "Angel" now that their "God" is dead, with Iwa in its current state, then the Fourth Shinobi war could very well happen with or without Akatuski anymore. "… Naruto."

"Yeah?" For once, the clone really didn't feel like talking, and his tired demeanor genuinely showed it.

"Good luck."

"Heh." He couldn't help but smile weakly, as if the two words were a bad inside joke between them. "Thanks."

Seconds later, the area was vacant of shinobi. Living or not.

o. o. o.

"… Dead. We couldn't save him." It was clear that the fact left a bad taste in Naruto's mouth. "The other two have left."

Kurama knew better than to delve deeper into the subject. Naruto had tried his damn hardest to get Nagato on board with his plans, and had he succeeded, the odds of everything being concluded in a neat and tidy bow would have been significantly higher.

No. Fuck the plans. Naruto just wanted to save Nagato. It was a shade of a reflection from his prior self. From a time where he had been more optimistic about everything. Having Nagato around, saving him would have been, not cathartic but… reassuring to Naruto. Proof that the blonde had been doing the right thing. That his ordeals and his motives were still genuine.

That he could still be a genuinely good person and succeed at being a good person when it really mattered.

It was going to take Naruto a while to get over this set back when things finally calmed down.

The best Kurama could do now, was keep the kid on task and not make things worse.

"The rest of Akatsuki."

Naruto glanced in the direction where Jiraiya and the others were, past the near impenetrable storm wall that had been generated by the Grand Spiral Lotus…

o. o. o.

"Tch." Jiraiya slid back, his arms burned slightly. "Well, if there were any questions about this guy being an Uchiha before…"

"Jiraiya of the Sanin." Tobi wasn't in much better state, his clothes torn apart to reveal the entirety of his pale upper body, covered in ash white patches making him look like he had some sort of disease. "Your reputation doesn't do you justice. I'm starting to feel as though Orochimaru's animosity towards you was spawned not out of annoyance but of genuine anticipation."

"Heh. Flattery gets you many places, but you have to be a woman to make any progress with me." The Toad Sage smirked.

"Says you." Ma muttered under her breath, glancing at the battle between Sasori and the top two veteran shinobi from Iwa.

For a moment, it had appeared as if the old geezers were going to steamroll the puppeteer, but the Akatsuki had pulled a joker from his hat, utilizing the hearts he had stolen to power his new body to pull a Kisame and shoot out enough water to submerge nearly everything around them. The rapid cooling had cracked and wrecked the giant golem the two old men had been dominating the fight with, and the water had expanded Sasori's range of options considering the fact that he was using the Sandaime Kazekage's body, meaning he had access to a slew of high powered lightning techniques at the ready.

The moment either old man hit the wet ground, they were liable to get fried. Onoki and Roshi had already had a few close calls involving some of Sasori's traps almost landing them had it not been for the aid of the other.

The geezers could and would have used some techniques to clear the water up and use some earth techniques, but when it came to off the cuff moves with immediate results, Sasori was the quicker draw and had greater reserves with his extra hearts providing more chakra and his remaining puppets giving him extra hands and feet to move. As a result, the fight was at a mid-air stalemate to see who would screw up first.

That was, at least, until a dozen massive air bullets blasted out from the titanic storm they were fighting next to, and obliterated roughly half of Sasori's remaining puppets.

Pop.

"Hi! I'm a clone! Look at me!" A clone of Naruto appeared on the back of one of the remaining puppets, soon followed by more clones. One per puppet.

"What the hell?" Sasori's artificial eyes widened in genuine surprise at the sudden interruption of Naruto's clones. His fake skin also seemed to grow more alarmed as he realized what Naruto's sudden participation in their fight meant.

"… Existence is pain! Reality is a sham! We must return to oblivion!" One of the clones shouted, just before it exploded, taking out the puppet it was on.

It was soon followed by all the other clones screaming similar nonsense, taking out their respective puppets and reducing the contraptions and traps within them to useless debris, leaving the still very confused Sasori exposed.

"And here I thought the only person that could make me have such mixed feelings was my wife." Onoki grumbled, having used brief opening he was granted to finally start another Dust Release technique.

"Quit your bitching and kill him already!" Roshi's arms radiated white with pure heat.

"I w-would stop if I were you."

"Ngh!"

A new voice and spike of chakra cut into the conversation, causing everyone to pause and find the source.

They were rewarded to see Kakuzu, so brutalized that half of his skin was no longer there, revealing his black tentacles where his muscle tendons should be. He literally looked like he was stitched together and literally falling apart at the seams.

And in his grasp was Kurotsuchi, wrapped in several places by his tentacles and holding a kunai at her kidneys.

"He's still alive?" Pa blinked. Between inhaling neurotoxin and taking Naruto's attack head on, he was surprised the man could even move, let alone breathe.

"I was p-prepared for being put in a r-rough spot, but I u-underestimated just how bad the d-damages could get." He slurred, random parts of his body twitched erratically to show that he did not escape from his predicament without issue.

He had managed to harden his skin at the last moment before Naruto's attack had come down, but as durable as he was, it didn't seem to prevent the nerve damage that the neurotoxin and micro needles that supplemented the attack did.

He was actually in the process of escaping the area while everyone was busy fighting when Kurotsuchi came across him on her way to join the fighting. It had taken a bit of creative thinking due to his condition, and the girl was educated on his abilities, but she was still wet behind the ears when it came to the more esoteric of shinobi arts.

He could have killed her then and there and continued with his escape, but the difficulty he had just trying to deal with her alone had underscored just how dire of a condition he was in and exposed him to the true state his body. He didn't know what sort of toxin he was hit with, or the after effects of the jutsu that had put him literally far more than six feet underground.

All he did know was that even if his hearts held out, his body itself wasn't going to last long at this rate. He actually needed medical treatment for once or he was going to die, one way or another.

Truth be told, he didn't care at all about Akatsuki anymore, or its goals, or the fighting.

But his name and abilities were out there. As skilled as he was, even if he made a full recovery, he would not last long should all the main villages give a damn about him. He wasn't Orochimaru.

That left only one real long term out for him in this situation.

He glanced at Tobi, his eyes hard and non-negotiable.

The Uchiha gave a shallow nod in understanding. "I would think carefully about your situation and future actions, Tsuchikage. Your granddaughter is not the first person I've held hostage against one of your stature."

"I already know all about your stint with Minato Namikaze and his wife. It takes a special kind of desperate degenerate to be proud of taking a fresh babe hostage. Something even the real Madara would find beneath him, which you would know if you ever met him. Your imitation leaves much to be desired." Onoki growled, anger saturating his tone.

Tobi's good eye flashed dangerously, clearly angered by the old man's claim. "Careful Onoki. It would be embarrassing to make such rash assumptions at this point."

"Ngh!" Kurotsuchi tried to act tough, but it was hard to when one of her arms was twisted enough to nearly dislocate it.

"Since you actually do value the life of this woman, I recommend a trade. Her for the Yonbi. In terms of visual appeal, I do believe that you are getting quite the bargain."

"How shocking and completely unexpected." Roshi grumbled, but clearly not liking it regardless. "You saw what happened. Your plan is already ruined and you don't even have the means to extract or control the Biju anymore. Why are you keeping up with this nonsense?"

"Hm. Hmhm." Tobi chuckled, conceited and clearly angry beyond belief, his eyes wide with rage and a tinge of insanity. "Don't underestimate me or what I can do. The statue is lost, and Kaguya is unexpected, but I am not without resources. Extracting and controlling a mindless beast like the Biju from a Jinchuriki is a simple enough endeavor for an Uchiha. I did it with the Kyubi sixteen years ago, and I can do it just as easily today. And power is power. With enough time, any fool can find a use for it."

"And now he speaks in the third person. Least he knows he's an idiot." Ma muttered under her breath.

"Mindless beast… That fool is underestimating me." Goku growled within his host, his anger radiating to such extremes that the area around his host was reaching critical temperatures. "Even if he succeeded in extracted me, he will find that controlling me will prove to be more difficult than anticipated. I know my name now."

"Careful poser. The shit thrower can hear you loud and clear, and he's more than willing to challenge your statement with extreme enthusiasm if given the chance."

"He was probably planning on stealing Pain's Rinnegan after this. That's why he's so confident."

It was hard to tell what had stunned Tobi more. The fact that Naruto had appeared seemingly out of thin air in the middle of everyone, or the fact that the kid had figured out what he was going to do next.

Regardless of what his reception was, Naruto didn't seem to care, floating in midair with his eyes closed and arms crossed as if he was the only adult there.

"The Rinnegan?" Kakuzu's grip tightened unconsciously, once more starting to rethink his alliances. Pain was a ham and a half, but he was at least reasonable. Leaving those eyes in the hands of "Tobi" on the other hand made him actually worried for all sorts of reasons.

"An interesting idea. But, you sound as though it is already a forgone conclusion." Tobi's eyes narrowed dangerously.

"That's because it is. Pain's dead." Naruto's tone was flat an unemotional, as if he was talking about the weather. "I killed him."

Jiraiya stilled, as if he had just been stabbed. Naruto had what?

"If you are referring to the Six Paths you obliterated, I'm afraid to tell you that the Rinnegan is still very much among us."

"No. I'm referring to the emaciated red headed paraplegic that had more twisted black rods in his spine than a radio tower, stuck in that fucked up crab-chair of his. Dumbass."

Tobi no longer looked so smug. Quite the contrary. He looked genuinely worried. "What. Did. You do?"

"I told you. I killed him." Naruto repeated himself bluntly, clearly egging Tobi on to do something irrational. The fact that the man didn't bring up Konan at all was a good tell that he was more worried about the Rinnegan than anything else.

"And his eyes?" All of Tobi's attention focused on Naruto and nothing else.

"Those things? Who knows?" The blonde shrugged him off. "I did a number on the area. They could still be there for all I care, though I highly doubt it. Or maybe I have them on me as we speak."

"You…" The Uchiha took a step forward, eyes burning red with rage.

"Tobi." Kakuzu hissed, getting his one way out of here on track. They were out gunned and outnumbered. If they screwed up now, they were as good as dead.

"Oh. So scary. The Sharingan. Truly going against someone both the Rinnegan and Byakugan and two Biju in her pales in comparison to someone with a single Sharingan that isn't even theirs. Oh truly my twisted luck has finally gone against me this day!" Naruto couldn't be more sarcastic if he tried.

"Do you truly think I am immature to fall for your provocations, brat? That I-"

"Hark! Doest thou hearest that on thine winds?!" Correction. Naruto could get more sarcastic than that. "The heralding of defeat from thine confiscated crimson eyeball of emo cometh! Accompanied with thine self-gratification that surpasses the might of ONE THOUSAND USED FLESHLIGHTS, truly mine self-esteem and dignity pales in measure! No matter mine power, handsome good looks, ramen addiction, access to ambient floating neurotoxins, cloaked army of equally good looking replicas, nor my inner furry companion's assistance, surely my defeat is certain!"

Jiraiya, Roshi, Ma, and Pa blinked, having been used enough to Naruto's insanity to manage to filter out most of it. What was that part about an army and neurotoxins?

Due to their anger, confusion, or frustration, it took everyone else there an additional few moments to catch onto the same thing.

By then it was too late.

The first thing that triggered everyone's senses was a tiny flicker of chakra. So minute that most shinobi wouldn't pick it up, but a rapid enough shift that a veteran would instantly be on high alert.

It originated right behind Kakuzu's skull.

Paralyzed and crippled as he was, on top of the fresh dose of neurotoxins that he had been breathing in, the heart thief had still managed to instinctively move, harden his skin, and stab at Kurotsuchi.

His movements were slow, as was his jutsu. The blade speared forward, gouging the side of his skull from behind, unable to break through his enhanced skin and bone, but still deep enough to launch one of his eyes out of place.

His hands were not slow though. A shinobi's hands were just as important as their vitals. Even paralyzed, an S ranked monster's fingers would still be at least as capable as an elite Jonin's so long as they were intact.

His hand with the kunai jutted forward, but was held back by a new hand that materialized on top of it before Naruto had even finished talking.

A second spike of chakra, and blade of wind came down like a guillotine, severing the tentacles ensnaring Kurotsuchi and splitting Kakuzu's kunai in half.

Kakuzu jumped back to recover what little he could, striking out with his tentacles in all directions to protect himself. The clones of Naruto that had revealed themselves had instantly moved to distance Kurotsuchi from the enemy.

Sasori and Tobi would have done something to aid Kakuzu's situation, but they were too preoccupied with the very large number of shadow clones that had assaulted them as well. Unlike Kakuzu, they weren't too physically crippled, so they managed to dispatch their attackers without much issue. Two dozen or so clones went up in literal smoke in an instant, but an instant was all that was needed to turn the situation around completely.

"Fucking brat!" Kakuzu swore as he skidded to a stop, hand over his now mutilated eye socket, soon accompanied by Tobi and Sasori.

"Useless old man." Naruto countered with a bored tone.

"Don't you ever shut up?" Sasori growled, ready to move at the slightest provocation.

"Bitch, I'm the biggest ham the Elemental Nations has ever spawned, and I'm fucking delicious."

As if to underscore his point, he waved a hand behind him, all but dismissing the titanic funnel that had been rotating in the background to reveal that the Grand Spiral Lotus was still rotating ominously in the sky.

"So nut up and eat me already, like you've been saying you were going to do since I showed up."

A twisted smile contorted the minds of many. Its owner was hungry.

Something shot straight at the group at speeds that vastly surpassed that of mere bullets and projectiles, spearing through the air as if it wasn't there, straight at Naruto's heart.

And then it was caught with a single hand ten meters from the target, the sudden jolt making a faint, yet deep thumping sound that everyone felt instinctively.

The Lord of Chaotic Heavens restrained the twisted nail. Unsurprised. Unamused. Unimpressed.

"And that, dear viewers…" The real Naruto sighed as he gripped the ebony spike, radiating with power as he counteracted the corrupted energies that saturated the projectile. A pitch black spike. "… Is why you always make sure that only your clones go Full Ham."

He turned to look at the source of the attack, as did everyone else.

"Aww. The ham was a lie? But I'm so hungry…"

Hidan grinned, manic in eyes, mind and mouth. Walking towards them with Iwagakure at his back, scythe twirling in hand.

The Abandoned Reaper has been called. It would have its harvest.

o. o. o.

A/N:

Ghost stood next to Saint Nicholas, each with a bottle of beer in hand, watching as a writhing crimson scythe was lowered into a pit filled with deranged elves.

"So what's with these fuckers?" The God of None asked curiously.

"Happens every year. Triple overtime on the last few days before launch is a bit too much for some of the new recruits so we have to isolate them for everyone's sake. We normally get a few hundred that snap by the time the numbers are done crunching." Santa shrugged, not at all caring as the weapon began to cry and slash at its soon to be tormentors frantically.

"What do they do down there?"

"These days? I lend them out to Bethesda for cheap labor on beta testing. Makes their games suck less and saves me the headache of having about fifty percent less people complain about my gifts not working."

"Huh. No kidding."

"WRYYYYYYYY!" The pit in front of them turned into a fountain of blood.

"Should we be worried? I don't think those little shits will last long."

"Don't worry. I have twenty separate pits. That way they can't unionize."

"Don't you mean organize?"

"Please. The industrial revolution's eight hundred years behind the system I've got running."

"… I am so glad you're smart enough to put Scab on your permanent Naughty list." Ghost held out his drink.

Clang.

Santa met it with his own. "You all are Ghost. You all are."

o. o. o.

A/N:

Thanks Kagaseo for Betaing.

Merry (Looks at the date)… Shit, uh, Happy New Year! Please don't kill me!

Really. I'm sorry. I managed to get the chapter done almost right after Christmas, but I had to beta it, and Kagaseo had RL issues and, yeah, shit happened. My crazy neighbor broke her hip on Christmas eve and we didn't know or find her until Christmas, and she's been more bitchy than normal lately and, lots of shit happened guys. Sorry.

Gonna keep this AN short so that I get it out as soon as possible:

Anime this January, awesome. Lots of good shit. Mob Psycho and Lord El Melloi Case Files.

Started posting Youtube videos. Mostly Fate Grand Order stuff. Watch it, Like it, or not. Still going by Third Fang.

Kagaseo is posting a new website with a new webstory and would like your support! Support him. He really deserves it. Beta version of the site is here: magikonline. com

No new tshirts this time, but I am planning on making a Log based shirt soon, because I'm not retarded.

Work again. Boo. Got presents. Yay. Smash Ultimate. Yay.

Done now. Sorry. Don't kill me. Sorry again.

REVIEW! WORSHIP THE LOG! I LOST COUNT OF HOW MANY CALLBACK JOKES I MADE IN THIS CHAPTER! AND REVIEW AGAIN!